Educating Entrepreneurial Citizens

Book excerpt: Educating Entrepreneurial Citizens examines the multiple and contradictory purposes and effects of entrepreneurship education aimed at addressing youth unemployment and alleviating poverty in Tanzania. Governments in sub-Saharan Africa face increasing pressure to educate young people through secondary school, supposedly equipping them with knowledge and skills for employment and their future. At the same time, many youths do not complete their education and there are insufficient jobs to employ graduates. The development community sees entrepreneurship education as one viable solution to the double edged problem of inadequate education and few jobs. But while entrepreneurship education is aligned with a governing rationality of neoliberalism that requires individuals to create their own livelihoods without government social supports, the two NGO programs discussed in this book draw on a rights-based discourse that seeks to educate those not served by government schools, providing them with educational and social supports to be included in society. The chapters explore the tensions that occur when international organizations and NGOs draw on both neoliberal and liberal human rights discourses to address the problems of poverty, unemployment and poor quality education. Furthermore, when these neo/liberal perspectives meet local ideas of reciprocity and solidarity, they create friction and alter the programs and effects they have on youth. The book introduces the concept of entrepreneurial citizens—those who utilize their innovative skills and behaviors to claim both economic and social rights from which they had been previously excluded. The programs taught youth how to develop their own enterprises, to earn profits, and to save for their own futures; but youth used their education, skills and labor to provide for basic needs, to be included in society, and to support their and their families’ well-being. By showing the contradictory effects of entrepreneurship education programs, the book asks international agencies and governments to consider how they can go beyond technical approaches of creating enterprises and increasing income, and head toward approaches that consider the kinds of labor that young people and communities value for their wellbeing. This book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners of education and international development, youth studies, African Studies and entrepreneurship/social entrepreneurship education.