Executive Director of the Institute for Liberty and Policy Innovation (ILAPI), Peter Bismark Kwofie, has stated that President John Dramani Mahama’s ‘Adwumaeura’ initiative is not a novel policy.
He explained that the policy is not unique because it is just a change of name in policy from the one implemented in 2015.
Speaking in an interview on Nyankonton Mu Nsem on Rainbow Radio 87.5 FM, he noted that the ‘Adwumaeura’ is the same as the Youth Enterprise Support (YES), which was introduced by the NDC with a seed capital of Ghc10 million.
“YES had an agenda to train, mentor, and grant capital to businesses, just like the ‘Adwumawura’. ‘Adwumawura’ is just a change of name because in 2015 and 2016, the NDC had a similar initiative known as YES, which was launched to train, mentor, and give seed capital. So, there is no difference between the 2016 YES of the NDC and the ‘Adwumawura’. It is not a different programme from YES, he stated.
He said the NPP took over and also changed the YES to the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) with the same objective.
Mr Kwofie posited that the NDC, taking government, only needed to continue executing the objectives of NEIP or build on what it did with YES instead of changing the name.
He lamented that although the two parties change the names of initiatives to suit their political agenda, they are unable to reach their targets and objectives despite the several amounts of money pumped into these policies.
To him, the 10,000 target of businesses that would be supported under the new initiative by the NDC is unrealistic.
He said consistently, successive governments have failed in achieving their targets in terms of beneficiaries.
Ye policy analyst stated that although the government can raise the amount of money for the ‘Adwumawura’, we have not been able to measure the impact of these initiatives.
“These initiatives are vote-buying schemes to convince the unemployed youth of the country to vote for them, and at the same time, it is also wasteful spending. But we are hoping the ‘Adwumawura’ will be successfully implemented. If we are changing names and spending money on these initiatives, we have to see or measure the positive impact.”
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
