The Effectiveness of Entrepreneurship Programs to Reduce Unemployment in Developing Countries: The Case of Saudi Arabia

Starting a new business, developing new products and/or services and bringing those to the market may seem deceitfully easy, but in reality, it is a very painful and risky endeavor that can be nearly impossible to undertake without proper implementation process in place. Several entrepreneurship programs have been established in different regions or countries to make a positive economic change while remaining profitable for both people and the government. Saudi Arabia is a rich country that enjoys high financial potential. In spite of the country is taking remarkable steps into the entrepreneurship world, there are still unique challenges that inspire or hamper entrepreneurs to engage in the entrepreneur programs' process more fully. In this paper, we explored these challenges and show the transformation of the ecosystem strategy that the Saudi Arabia government has taken to develop the entrepreneurship ecosystem and startup. The study aims to investigate and analyze the relationships between the effectiveness of entrepreneurship programs and unemployment. The paper, however, concludes that the existing entrepreneurship ecosystem is still needed development in order to resolve the problem of unemployment in Saudi Arabia. The country should improve the strategies that can support to create an entrepreneurial culture and encourage the youth to involve in starting new enterprises.