Entrepreneurship as a Tool to Tackle Graduate Youth Unemployment in Developing Economies

Unemployment reduction is one of the grand challenges to achieve the sustainable development goals. More specifically, graduate youth unemployment is a rising concern for low and middle-income countries. Accordingly, government and policymakers seek to promote entrepreneurship to address the issue of unemployment through entrepreneurship education and training. Building on this notion, this chapter discusses STEP (student training for entrepreneurial promotion) as an action-oriented entrepreneurship training program. This chapter shows the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of STEP, how the impact of STEP unfolds over time, and the processes that happen during STEP. This chapter also covers cases where STEP has been extended to different academic settings, bringing systemic change in academic curriculums and for different target groups. Finally, this chapter discusses some common challenges when implementing STEP at partner institutions. The chapter concludes that STEP is an effective tool to tackle graduate youth unemployment in developing economies.