Entrepreneurship Education as a Strategy for Reducing Youth Unemployment in Ogun and Oyo States: An Empirical Assessment

This study empirically assessed the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education integrated into vocational programmes as a strategy for reducing youth unemployment in Ogun and Oyo States, South West Nigeria. While entrepreneurship education is widely promoted as a youth employment intervention, rigorous evaluations of its impact within Nigerian vocational education contexts remain scarce. Using an ex-post facto causal comparative design, employment outcomes were compared between 300 vocational graduates who received comprehensive entrepreneurship education (minimum 60 hours) and 300 who received minimal or no such instruction. Binary logistic regression was employed to model employment status. Findings showed that graduates with entrepreneurship education had 2.4 times higher odds of being employed or self-employed 12 months after graduation (OR = 2.41, p < 0.01), controlling for gender, field of study, and parental socioeconomic status. Business plan development, access to seed financing, and market exposure during training were the most predictive programme components. Graduates in tailoring, food production, and ICT demonstrated the strongest entrepreneurship education effects. The study recommends standardizing entrepreneurship education content across vocational programmes, developing a post-graduation micro-enterprise support scheme, and establishing state-level evaluation frameworks for entrepreneurship education programmes. Keywords: entrepreneurship education, youth unemployment, vocational education, Ogun State, Oyo State.