Influencing Rural Entrepreneurs’ Participation in Training Programs in the East Mamprusi District of Ghana

The objective of this study is to identify the determinants of rural entrepreneurs’ participation in training programs with empirical evidence from the East Mamprusi District in the northern region of Ghana. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to obtain data from 120 owners of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises via a multistage sampling process. Logistic regression was used to analyze the data. The study identifies several factors to have significant influence on the likelihood of participation. These include entrepreneur’s socio-demographic features, access to services and past experience acquired in their business operations. Government, Non-governmental Organizations and Civil Society Organizations should, therefore, put more effort in widening the scope of participation in entrepreneurial skills development training. Appropriate attention should be given to gender, age, education, past experience, membership to association and media of advertisement since they are the factors that drive entrepreneurial motivation to participate in training programs. Rural entrepreneurs should develop the initiative to form associations where information on training needs can easily reach them. Any training intervention should also target young entrepreneurs to have more participants. These results have implications for entrepreneurship development in least developed countries.