“Entrepreneurship as a Career Option”: Graduating Class of 2018 Received Training

Director for University-Industry Linkage organized and delivered training on “Entrepreneurship as a Career Option” to more than 2500 graduating students of 2018. The students were drown from 8 colleges including HiT and it took place from June 24-July 4, 2018 in Afran Kallo Hall. The training was delivered by invited professional trainers from Entrepreneurship Development Center (EDC), Addis Ababa.

According to Dr. Mitiku Eshetu, Director for University-Industry Linkage and Entrepreneurship Development, the objective of the training was “To develop entrepreneurial skills of our graduates so that they can create their own business in their field of specialization. In this training more than 2500 graduate students participated and the training was successfully conducted even though there was some overlap with other activities of the University such as the Job Fair Expo, and ongoing junior students’ examination which leads to lack of training rooms. Moreover, some students were presenting project reports and could not attend the training as per the schedule. To overcome these problems we allowed the students to attend missed sessions by delivering the training in different rounds for different colleges and HiT,” said Dr. Mitiku.

The Director also indicated that as of the upcoming academic year such trainings will be given in different modalities in which awareness about entrepreneurship and business incubation will be given for first year students to prepare and motivate them to develop business plan/projects and compete for awards.

The plan is to have trainings that will be given at different level and invite students for competition by developing business plan and technologies. Different forums will be organized to engage students for development of innovative business/technology ideas and incubation.

The feedback of the trainees indicated that the training was very important and brought about development of right attitude towards self-employment and business creation. Because of the large number of graduates from different universities in the country, getting employment is becoming difficult. Hence, such training will play paramount importance in enabling graduates to create their own business and be successful entrepreneurs.