Entrepreneurship Development Centers: A Strategic Approach to Poverty Reduction Among Youths in North East Nigeria

Poverty reduction has become a major issue for economic and political agenda of many governments,
nongovernmental and private organizations using various strategies in different part of the world.
Entrepreneurship Development Centers (EDCs) is one strategy that could assist in poverty reduction in
North East Nigeria where poverty rate is currently above 70 percent. Therefore, the paper objective
was to examine the contributions of EDCs to poverty reduction among youths in the region. The
methodology was based on review of on-line materials on entrepreneurship, EDCs, poverty reduction,
training, income generation, job creation and innovation including journals and conference papers
obtained from various databases like Research Gate, Semantic, JSTOR, Wiley, Goggle Scholar etc.
Entrepreneurship and business management books, Students Handbooks obtained from Universities,
Polytechnics and Colleges of Education on operations of EDCs and poverty reduction in various
countries were consulted and reviewed. Information gotten and examined from these materials led to
the conclusion that EDCs are strategic to poverty reduction in this region. Recent studies point to the
fact that EDCs have served as hubs for poverty reduction with remarkable success in many regions of
the world. Based on the review and findings, the paper recommends more funding and diversification
of EDCs and improvement in workshop and training tools so that the rate of poverty could be further
reduced. The paper contributes to knowledge by synthesizing existing literature on the contributions of
EDCs to poverty reduction through training, job creation, income generation, and innovation in North
East Region of Nigeria.