CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY’S ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN IGBOLAND: A HISTORICAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education is very important to the survival and progress of any given society and also essential to human development. People who are trained through entrepreneurship education acquire various skills which they use to make innovations and inventions that in turn transform the society. When the Christian missionaries arrived Igboland in the 19th century, they observed that Igbo people were entrepreneurs in nature. Hence, the missionaries through the introduction of entrepreneurship, technical and vocational education played vital role in human development of the people. This led to economic advancement and Western civilization of the Igbo. It is obvious that many works written about Christian missionary enterprise in Igbo territory without an in-depth study on how the missionaries through entrepreneurship education brought human development to Igbo people. This is the area this article intends to fill. The study makes use of secondary sources of data collection like unpublished project works, text books, mainline books, journals and book of readings. The study finds out that, the European Christian missionary bodies really made significant progress in human development of the indigenous people through entrepreneurship education.