ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ECONOMIC GROWTH OF NIGERIA

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been perceived as a veritable tool in the economic growth and development of a nation and has become one of the policy thrusts of national government within the past ten years. In spite of the role entrepreneurship is supposed to play in an economy, Nigeria’s economy is still witnessing unstable economic growth, ravaging and ever-increasing unemployment rate, low and fluctuating per capita income, low rate of business births and high rate of business deaths. The objectives of the study were to determine the effect of entrepreneurship on the economic growth and to ascertain the direction of causality between entrepreneurship and economic growth of Nigeria for the period 1994-2020. The data employed were secondary data sourced from the World Bank, Index Mundi, and Macrotrends for the period 1994 to 2020. This study used multiple regression models estimated with the aid of EViews application software for windows version 8. Pairwise granger causality test was also employed. The main findings were that entrepreneurship proxied by self-employed (SEMP) has positive and significant effect on the economic growth of Nigeria and does not granger cause the economic growth. The recommendations were that the various tiers of government should consistently provide appropriate policies, enabling entrepreneurial environment and adequate financial support in order to promote entrepreneurial development, boost productivity and economic growth in Nigeria.