Youth Finance

The UN Secretary General’s High-level Meeting on Financing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development discussed focus of investments, measuring data for SDGs and vulnerable countries and sectors.

According to the article, the meeting focused on: 

Leading retail bank, Diamond Bank Plc has once again demonstrated its passion for supporting small businesses by rewarding finalists of the seventh season of the Building Entrepreneurs Today (BET) programme with N15million grant.

Ikenna Ubah, Tope Alake, Jumoke Dada, Bayo Ojelabi and Osagie Azeta emerged winners of the grants having displayed exceptional skills and productive business ideas after six months of entrepreneurship training.

On May 15-16, in the heart of Nairobi, Kenya, 300 plus individuals from more than 175 institutions and 50 countries gathered at the Africa SME Finance Forum to discuss innovative solutions to promote access to finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Africa. As a key supporter of the Forum, the Mastercard Foundation hosted a panel titled “Disrupting Systems: Financing Africa’s Youth Entrepreneurs.”

The triad of entrepreneurship, self-employment, and financial inclusion underpins policy and development interventions meant to address the youth employment challenge in Africa. Youth savings groups are being widely promoted as a first step toward financial inclusion and economic empowerment. This article reports on the links between income-generating activities of 57 members of youth savings groups in Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Ghana, and their membership in savings groups.

Microfinance is generally seen as a way to fix credit markets and unleash the productive capacities of poor people who are dependent on self-employment. The microfinance sector has grown quickly since the 1990s, paving the way for other forms of social enterprise and social investment. But recent evidence shows only modest average impacts on customers, generating a backlash against microfinance. This paper reconsiders the claims about microfinance, highlighting the diversity in evidence on impacts and the important (but limited) role of subsidies.

The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman released a study into factors impacting small to medium enterprise investment. Speaking at the Institute of Public Accountants national conference on the Gold Coast, Ombudsman Kate Carnell said barriers to investment included access to capital, red tape and energy prices.

Babson College is a founding institution and lead sponsor of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). GEM is a global consortium that conducts research on 66 world economies. GEM brings together over 400 researchers from across the globe and includes more than 100 institutions every year. The first report was published in 1999.

As more youth enter the workforce, they are facing increasing difficulty in procuring employment. The traditional sources of opportunity, governments and large corporations, in general are not hiring at the same levels, if at all.  As such, entrepreneurship is seen an important option for creating sustainable livelihoods for this segment of the population.