A Dissertation submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for Award of the Master degree in Business Administration-Corporate Management (MBA-CM) of Mzumbe University
Youth in a society represents the driving force for economic development. But due to the serious problem of unemployment in most of the developing countries specifically Tanzania, youth have a strong feeling that entrepreneurship can play a great role in unlocking growth by creating jobs and supporting small and informal sector business. This study assesses the readiness of youth in starting business ventures in Tanzania in terms of motivation, entrepreneurial ability, perceived behavioral control and family background.
The respondents were selected through simple random and purposive sampling with a sample of 150. Data were collected through self-administered and were analyzed with the facilitation of Statistical package of Social Sciences (SPSS). Multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between variables. The findings of the study revealed that, motivations, entrepreneurial ability and perceived behavioral control were statistically significant related to entrepreneurial readiness among youths. In the contrary, family background was found to be statistically insignificant relating to entrepreneurial readiness among youth.
Furthermore, it was found that youth are faced by different challenges as they intend to engage in entrepreneurship. The challenges revealed were the lack of enough start-up capital, lack of entrepreneurial education among youth, lack of markets to sell the products and low confidence among youths. Given those challenges, the researcher recommended some measures or strategies that can be used to boost and support youth entrepreneurship in Tanzania. The strategies proposed were, to provide entrepreneurial education to youth to increase their business skills, assisting youth with funds to finance their startups, assisting youth in finding markets and reducing or removing unnecessary taxes and registration procedures.
Lastly, the researcher recommended that youth should change their mindsets from waiting for employments from the government to self-employment. Also the government should help to provide youth with special entrepreneurial training and programmes that will involve ways to start and sustain businesses in the time of difficulties.