Does Entrepreneurship Guarantee Youth Empowerment in Nigeria? The Role of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of entrepreneurship within the context of SMEs on youth empowerment in Nigeria. Providing an empirical evidence to answer the research question required the extraction of data between 1991 and 2019 from the World Development Indicators. Meanwhile, the data was subjected to various pre-tests such as unit roots and Co-integration tests before the adapted models were estimated using Fully Modified Least Squares (FMOLS) and Granger causality techniques. The summary of the major discoveries in the study were enunciated as follows; self-employment and youth unemployment had a significant negative relationship in Nigeria. In the same vein, population growth rate and youth unemployment had a significant negative relationship. However, commercial banks loans to SMEs and youth unemployment had an insignificant positive relationship in the country. By and large, self-employment generated by SMEs reduces youth unemployment significantly in Nigeria. Furthermore, a long run convergence existed among the variables of interest in one hand, a unidirectional causal relationship running from youth empowerment to SMEs financing existed in the study. Also, a unidirectional causality running from self-employment to population growth rate was discovered. Therefore, the study concludes that entrepreneurship - SMEs has the capacity to guarantee youth empowerment in Nigeria. Against this backdrop, this study recommends that the policymakers and other stakeholders in Nigeria should embrace entrepreneurship, especially SMEs as a reliable means of youth empowerment through employment generation in the country.