Entrepreneurship begins at age four (2): A national pilot Ghana can scale, and how to anchor it without turning it into a PR exercise

By Joseph BENSON

Part 1 argued that entrepreneurship education cannot be a late elective if Ghana expects entrepreneurship to produce national-scale productivity, jobs, and innovation. The remedy is not a brand-new subject called “entrepreneurship” for small children.

It is a practical capability pipeline; starting in kindergarten and lower primary, so that, by the time learners reach secondary/TVET and tertiary education, the system is deepening advanced competencies rather than replaying basics.

The question now is implementation: what can Ghana do within existing structures, at realistic cost, with credible delivery, and with public accountability?

Start with the constraint Ghana can already see. The World Bank’s Human Capital Index brief reports that Ghana delivers about 12.1 expected years of schooling but only about 6 learning-adjusted years, a reminder that “schooling time” is not automatically “capability time.” The same brief reports an HCI value of 0.45, implying major losses in future productivity if learning quality does not improve.

A national entrepreneurship pipeline must therefore do two things at once: strengthen foundational learning and intentionally cultivate the transferable competencies that later drive enterprise quality, i.e., problem solving, initiative, collaboration, communication, and resilience.

Ghana’s curriculum direction gives policymakers a workable starting point. NaCCA explicitly links creativity and innovation to entrepreneurial skills and enterprise, and the kindergarten curriculum emphasizes play-based learning, the kind of pedagogy that develops curiosity, confidence, and collaborative problem solving. The opportunity is to connect these pieces into a coherent, measurable pathway that is visible in classrooms, not only in strategy documents.

A pilot that fits Ghana

A scalable pilot should be a government-owned program delivered through government systems, with a small number of proven partners contracted as implementers and technical anchors. Ownership must sit with the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service; NaCCA should ensure curriculum alignment and assessment compatibility; districts should provide supervision and quality assurance.

UNESCO’s work on Ghana’s early childhood education policy environment highlights familiar bottlenecks: weak coordination mechanisms, inadequate financing, limited data at sub-national level, and insufficient teacher professional development – precisely the implementation gaps a pilot must be designed to close, not bypass.

In practice, the pilot can run as a 12-month program across 20–40 public schools spanning diverse districts (urban, peri-urban, rural). The first phase should target KG to Primary 3, because this is where learning habits, language, confidence, and self-regulation are formed; and where later learning becomes either easier or harder.

The teaching model should be deliberately simple: small, repeatable classroom routines that embed entrepreneurial competencies through normal instruction, not as an extra subject. In KG and lower primary, that means structured play, storytelling, role-play markets, design-and-build tasks, teamwork roles, and guided reflection on “what worked, what failed, what we try next.”

The assessment model should be equally practical: portfolios, demonstrations, and rubrics for collaboration, communication, initiative, and problem solving, alongside standard literacy and numeracy measures. This design avoids a common failure mode: new programs becoming exam-driven content add-ons that overwhelm teachers and distort learning.

Secondary and TVET should then serve as the applied bridge. UNESCO-UNEVOC’s guidance emphasizes that entrepreneurial learning is most powerful in vocational pathways when linked to practical projects, work-based learning, and livelihoods.

Ghana can translate this into supervised enterprise projects tied to local markets and apprenticeships, so learners practice customer discovery, costing, quality standards, and responsible practice. Only then can tertiary education play its proper role: deepening and scaling – innovation strategy, venture design, commercialization, investment readiness, governance, export capability, and sustainability-driven entrepreneurship.

What to measure, so the program cannot hide behind slogans

If Ghana measures success only through student enthusiasm or intentions, it will reward rhetoric. The pilot should be built with a measurement spine that connects classroom practice to national outcomes.

In Year one, metrics should be educational and behavioral: improvements in foundational literacy and numeracy; classroom engagement; and competency rubrics for teamwork, communication, initiative, and problem solving. Program fidelity should be tracked through coaching logs and classroom observations.

In Years Two and Three, metrics can shift toward pathway indicators: participation in applied enterprise projects in upper primary/JHS and TVET; portfolio progression; and early evidence of market-relevant skills. Over a longer horizon, Ghana should track post-school outcomes among cohorts exposed to the pipeline: venture survival proxies, formalization rates, revenue growth, job creation, and innovation activity. This is how the country tests whether entrepreneurship education is producing capability that changes enterprise quality.

Where an anchor partner fits, and how to justify it credibly

Ghana should not build this pilot around one organization. But it is also unrealistic to scale new pedagogy without an anchor partner that has demonstrated competence in teacher training, coaching systems, and early-years implementation.

The anchor role is technical, not political: building training materials, coaching models, trainer capacity, and monitoring routines that governments can adopt and scale. To avoid any perception of advertising, the anchor should be chosen against transparent criteria: strategic fit with early-years pedagogy; demonstrated partnership with government systems; public documentation of results and learning; a scalable delivery approach such as train-the-trainer and coaching; and transparency through published reports and evaluations.

On those criteria, Sabre Education is a credible candidate for the early-years anchor role, specifically for the KG–P3 component because its stated mission is to partner with government to implement play-based learning at scale, focusing on influencing early childhood policy and practice, training teachers and education officials, and improving learning environments. Sabre’s published materials and independent references show that it already operates in the exact leverage point identified in Part one: early-years pedagogy and teacher support.

For example, Global Partnership for Education describes Sabre’s approach as a sustainable train-the-trainer model in partnership with government, involving coaching trainers from the Ghana Education Service. Sabre’s own end-of-project evaluation for its Eastern Region Transformational Teacher Training describes a three-year project begun in 2019 that aimed to improve teaching and learning across government kindergarten schools in six districts in the Eastern Region.

Sabre’s public communications and reports also publish scale signals that are easy to verify; one recent summary of its 2023–2025 impact reporting states that Sabre trained more than 6,000 teachers, supported 709 education officials, and contributed to over 361,000 children receiving play-based kindergarten education over that period.

This is not a claim that Sabre is the only capable organization. Ghana’s early learning ecosystem includes other partners supporting play-based learning and child development. The point is simply that an anchor partner must match the upstream problem the article identified—and must publish enough evidence for public scrutiny.

Evidence-informed collaboration is also feasible: Innovations for Poverty Action notes that researchers worked with Sabre and GES to conduct a randomized evaluation of a teacher-training program, which is the kind of learning discipline Ghana’s reforms need.

As the author, I also disclose a personal basis for confidence in Sabre’s seriousness: during my MSc research on the role of education in economic development, Sabre’s engagement and feedback were invaluable. That experience does not replace public evidence; it complements it.

Keeping the program national, not organizational

A well-designed pilot should read like a national program, not a campaign. The Ministry of Education and GES should publish a short governance note: the program is government-owned; partners are contracted implementers; data will be published; and scaling decisions will be evidence-based. If outcomes do not improve, the program pauses and redesigns, because the goal is capability, not branding.

This governance stance protects Ghana’s reform credibility. It signals that competency-based education is not a slogan but a measurable pathway. It protects teachers from program overload by integrating routines into normal instruction. And it reassures parents that entrepreneurship education is not “business registration for children” but the disciplined development of learning habits and value-creation skills.

One additional advantage of starting in KG is policy alignment. Ghana already has an Early Childhood Education Policy framework that envisions quality KG services that support holistic development and school readiness. Positioning the pilot as a way to deliver that vision; through better teacher professional development, stronger classroom practice, and clearer monitoring reduces policy friction.

It also enables MoE/GES to speak honestly to the public: this is a learning-quality program that also builds future entrepreneurial capability, not a distraction from literacy and numeracy. Done well, it can become the model for how competency-based education is implemented across subjects nationwide, not a standalone initiative. From KG upward.

What Ghana gains if it gets this right

If Ghana completes the pipeline, KG foundations, primary reinforcement, secondary/TVET application, and tertiary deepening, the payoffs compound. Tertiary institutions can stop teaching the basics and start producing innovators and scalers. SMEs gain stronger managerial and problem-solving depth.

Innovation diffusion widens beyond a small elite. Formalization becomes easier because enterprises can meet governance and quality requirements. Productivity improves. And the economy gets more firms that can grow, export, and create durable jobs.

Part one argued that entrepreneurship begins in childhood. Part two adds the policy implication: if Ghana wants entrepreneurship education to matter at national scale, it must be implemented as national infrastructure – owned by government, built in stages, measured rigorously, and anchored by partners selected for competence, not publicity.

Joseph is an entrepreneur, a business development consultant, and philanthropist based in the USA but globally connected with world renowned companies. . Passionate about education and a founder of diverse businesses globally.

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