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As part of efforts to address the high youth unemployment rate in Ghana, Government announced an ambitious entrepreneurial programme in the 2022 budget known as YouStart, with the objective of building an entrepreneurial nation and creating at least 1 million jobs for the youth in the next 3 years (2022 – 2025). The YouStart programme is a vehicle through which Government intends to provide funding and technical support to the youth (18-40 years) and youth-led businesses to assist them start, build and grow their own businesses.

The YouStart Grace programme will be spearheaded by the Faith Based Organizations (FBOs) across the country. This programme focuses on providing technical skills training and business development support to individuals and businesses to enable them to become employable and to scale-up their businesses respectively.

The programme targets unemployed youth especially graduates (i.e., SHS and University graduates), vulnerable and needy persons, rural settlers and micro businesses, especially women owned businesses. It is expected that, at least 40% and 30% of YouStart Grace beneficiaries should be females and rural settlers respectively.

The main objective of the YouStart Grace programme is to create about 100,000 to 200,000 jobs within the economy over the next three years. This will be achieved by:

  • Providing professional vocational and technical skills training to equip young people with employable skills;
  • Providing career guidance and business development support to young people and micro businesses to assist them choose a career pathway and to scale-up their businesses respectively;
  • Providing capital (micro loans & Starter packs) to the trained artisans and businesses to enable them start and scale-up their businesses respectively; and by
  • Ensuring broad coverage of the YouStart programme across the branch network of the FBOs