Understanding Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa

  This book investigates entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa with particular attention paid to venture-ship as an approach for addressing obstacles like limited financing and infrastructure. Innovation and resilience among entrepreneurs were highlighted throughout. A multidisciplinary lens explored effective strategies for success that may encourage further research or support as entrepreneurs navigated sub-Saharan Africa’s intricate entrepreneurial environment.

This chapter seeks to expatiate the underpinnings of entrepreneurship education and training within institutional boundaries. We perform a qualitative enquiry based on a single-case participatory study to explore the linkages between the development of an entrepreneurship training programme and institutional isomorphism within the University of Ghana. We find that, in the quest to develop a successful entrepreneurship education and training programme, institutional factors come to play. Essentially, factors such as knowledge of external programmes, higher institutional authority endorsements, and external partnerships are relevant to ensuring maximum impact. Consequently, institutional contexts should be of interests to entrepreneurship education scholarship and as such conceptual extensions should be considered in future entrepreneurship education and training works.

The study set out to discover from the perspectives of youth entrepreneurs in Ghana, civil societies and the government, the internal and external challenges that impede the ability to grow youth entrepreneurial ventures as well as capture their perceived ways forward through a mixed-method approach. Analysis revealed a significant relationship between internal challenges and marital status, business location and business registration. Also, there was a significant relationship between external challenges and marital status, business location and business registration. Marital status and location of business predicted internal challenges. There were significant differences in business location (virtual or physical) and marital status concerning perceived internal and external challenges. Regarding the ways forward, there was a significant relationship between the region and access to finance, type of business and right support systems and infrastructure, and access to entrepreneurship networks and collaborations/partnerships. A significant relationship was found between location and access to finance, the right support systems and infrastructure, and the creation of the avenues for capacity building/skills development and between monthly profit and flexible business registration processes. The location of the business and the type of business predicted the right support systems and infrastructure. There were significant differences in one’s preference for the right support systems and infrastructure, increased market opportunities for business products, access to technology tools, and flexible business registration process concerning business type. Stakeholders believed the way forward is access to finance and shorter processes for business registration, support system, market opportunities, capacity building, networking, and providing tech tools.

This chapter examines the factors determining energy choices among women-owned micro-food processing and preparation enterprises (FPP-Enterprises) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It applies logit and multinomial regression models expressing energy choices as a function of an enterprise’s economic factors, characteristics, and enterprise-owner’s attributes on primary data collected from 299 FPP-enterprises. Descriptive statistics reveal that only 11% of these enterprises used modern/clean energy (liquefied petroleum gas [LPG] and/or electricity). The rest (55% and 34%) utilized charcoal only, or charcoal and firewood, respectively. As a new contribution to the energy choice literature, regression results reveal that an enterprise’s income/revenue has a significant influence on the choice of modern energy sources, which is consistent with the energy-ladder hypothesis. Also, a business’ formality captured by its location plays a crucial role in energy choice. For example, FPP-enterprises operating in permanent locations had higher probability of utilizing modern/clean energy sources than those operating in open-air spaces along streets. Policy instruments, setting aside or developing fixed premises and encouraging women-owned FPP-enterprises to relocate to the premises, and facilitating the growth of enterprises’ revenues are important in encouraging modern/clean energy use.

This chapter examines the relationship between firm-level characteristics and the recruitment or promotion of women to top managerial positions. Moreover, it assesses the entrepreneurial outcomes of top women managers in Tanzania’s private sector. The chapter generates descriptive statistics and logit regression models on World Bank-generated data from a survey of 424 private firms. The findings indicate that on average, the probability of women becoming top managers was only six per cent (6%), which is so negligible that it signifies a substantial work ahead for Tanzania to achieve gender equality in corporate top management. The results further reveal that women’s progression to the top managerial positions is limited for large- and more formal firms in the export business or in manufacturing, construction, and transportation. Furthermore, the findings indicate that companies without women shareholders did not have top women managers. The study also found women to feature in top managerial positions in small and less formalised firms, mainly with women owners and/or in textile and restaurant. Recruiting more employees with tertiary education was also associated with decreased chances of women becoming top managers. Women- and men-top managers in firms that had women owners achieved higher firm’s growth and profitability than women- and men-top managers in firms owned by men, respectively. Implicitly, there is an overriding need to encourage private firms to attract more women to firm ownership and recruitment of more women in top managerial positions for high entrepreneurial outcomes.

Traditional, Western approaches to entrepreneurship do not adequately capture what is occurring in the sub-Saharan African context. This paper reviews the extent to which specific alternative theoretical perspectives of entrepreneurship are present/applicable in/to sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past two decades, more established economics-based views of entrepreneurial behavior have been supplemented with alternative theoretical approaches to scholarship in the entrepreneurship field; including effectuation and entrepreneurial bricolage. This chapter reviews these literatures with a view to what is occurring and applicable in/to the sub-Saharan African environment. There is increasing evidence of effectuation and bricolage in the activities of entrepreneurial actors in resource-constrained environments such as much of sub-Saharan Africa. Emphasizing affordable loss as opposed to expected returns; exploiting networks and social capital through collaboration rather than obsessing over competitive analysis; leveraging contingencies rather than exploiting pre-existing intellectual capital; and adapting to an unpredictable future rather than forecasting an uncertain one, effectuation and bricolage appear to be relevant and exploited entrepreneurial approaches in much of Africa.

Open innovation is a driver and facilitator of value creation for economic growth. However, research on the concept mainly focuses on formal sectors and neglects its impact on entrepreneurship in the informal sector. Research on open innovation has thus far only focused on formal sector firms and large multinational corporations.

Despite an increasing scholarly attention to understand rural entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial processes in developing countries’ context are largely unexplored. Knowledge about different structures that configures rural entrepreneurial processes is inadequate to fully understand the phenomena from the perspectives of developing countries. More specifically, the knowledge of rurality and the gendered structures, and their influences on rural entrepreneurship, remains mostly assumptive amongst professionals and policymakers. This chapter attempts to fill this knowledge gap by exploring, analysing and discussing the influence of rurality and gendered structures on rural entrepreneurship. We achieve our objectives with the aid of three case studies of rural women entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector within Sub-Saharan African countries’ context, Tanzania in particular.

This chapter examines customer service as a strategic growth tool for micro, small, and medium entrepreneurial firms (MSMEs). Customer service is crucial to any business, particularly for MSMEs trying to establish themselves in a competitive market. However, these firms often need to pay more attention to customer service due to resource constraints, lack of skills and knowledge, and other factors. The extant literature examines customer service within the context of large organizations, with little attention paid to businesses within the micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) sector. This chapter argues that customer service is more crucial for MSMEs than large corporations. The chapter is conceptual and relies heavily on literature and industry experiences. The main finding from this study is that only a few MSMEs in Ghana consider customer service to be what transpires between the business and the customer during the product or service exchange period. The chapter contributes to the literature by exploring the importance of customer service for sustainable MSMEs in Ghana. It reinforces that customer service since the turn of the millennium transcends the business encounter stage through customer relationship management to winning the customer's lifetime loyalty. The chapter contributes to the customer service literature, especially on MSMEs. This chapter also calls for implementing appropriate customer service practices that enhance the core product or services rendered, which could eventually yield desired benefits to consumers.

The purpose of the study is to examine government and investor support constraints, as well as future visions relative to successful creative entrepreneurship in Ghana. Two future workshops were organized to source data for the study. Workshops as arts-based methods are usually useful for the study of creative works in helping to strengthen the research-practice-knowledge nexus. The results point at both public sector and private sector challenges. The implications of the challenges and the declining state of the sub-sector are discussed, and future visions are proffered to solve the challenges. On the issue of future visions relative to government and investors support to ensure successful creative entrepreneurship activities, participants at the workshop proposed a public support funding scheme; grants for capacity building relative to training and innovation, equipment, and machinery; construction of regional and district theaters and Exim banks to finance artistic and creative entrepreneurs.

This concluding chapter presents entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa through a venture-ship lens, emphasizing its role in economic growth and poverty reduction. It explores some of the challenges entrepreneurs encounter such as financing and infrastructure needs while showcasing digital innovation opportunities such as women's entrepreneurship. Furthermore, this chapter proposes supportive policies, improved financial access, education programs designed to empower entrepreneurs as well as research agendas which aim at uncovering entrepreneurial opportunities, innovations and impacts of supportive ecosystems on sustainable development in this region.