Social Entrepreneurship and Franchising: A Panacea for Emerging Countries? The Case of Algeria

One of the most intractable social and economic challenges in emerging countries, namely, high unemployment, may be tackled by social entrepreneurship and franchising. In this ongoing research, we focus on Algeria as the case study to demonstrate the practical application of social entrepreneurship and franchising in an emerging country. Though Algeria has invested heavily in large-scale government-sponsored employment programs, unemployment, especially among the youth, remains stubbornly high, leading to a number of serious social and security problems (criminality, drug usage, suicides, illegal emigration, terrorism, etc.). We argue that social entrepreneurship combined with franchising has the potential to foster quickly a large number of social entrepreneurs, leading to the creation of a large number of sustainable jobs, especially among the educated youth in Algeria and, by extension, in many emerging countries.