Abstract
In both entrepreneurship and management and organisation studies more generally, there is a growing recognition of the need to move beyond the dominant focus on research and theorising within the North American and European context. For example, Wickert et al. (2024) argue that the ‘vast majority of empirical investigations and theoretical explanations of management, managers and those being managed that are published in leading management journals are based on research that predominantly originates from Western contexts, particularly the USA and the larger European countries. Non-Western contexts, in turn, reside at the periphery of mainstream management scholarship’. They contend that this provides an inherently limited view of the contextual factors that may explain variation in management practices across the globe, and leads to a reductionist view of non-Western contexts as little more than a means for exploring the boundary conditions of mainstream ‘Western’ theories. Their call for scholars to more fully embrace non-Western contexts in their research is echoed by Bothello and Bonfim (2024) who further argue, in the context of studying marginalised groups (including necessity entrepreneurs), that while the intent is to ‘challenge the taken-for-granted epistemological and ontological assumptions in management and organization research’ the practice of such research is often ‘a phenomenon of extraction, where knowledge and insights from locals – who have lived experiences of marginalisation, exclusion, precarity and deprived human rights – are mined and exported for consumption in places that are far removed, culturally, economically, and geographically from the source’.
In entrepreneurship this call to more fully embrace non-Western contexts is reflected in Bruton et al.’s (2022) desire to develop indigenous theorising as an alternative to the dominance in academic research of the US model of entrepreneurship, and by Keim et al.’s (2024) push for us to rethink who is involved in entrepreneurship research, including the ‘voices of subaltern groups who lack agency due to their social status in society’ and the ‘participation of a variety of stakeholders . . . notably those affected by structural injustices’ (Keim et al., 2024: 7). This, however, requires a different approach to research and theorising in entrepreneurship that recognises that ‘the understanding of the world by far exceeds the Western understanding of the world’ (Santos, 2014: viii); in other words, there can be no global social justice without global cognitive and epistemic justice (Fricker, 2007), and the theories and concepts developed in the Global North and employed in the entire academic world either do not identify the alternatives emerging from the Global South or do not valorise them as worthwhile contributions towards constructing a better society (Harrison, 2024).
Against this background, the publication of Entrepreneurship and Economic Development in Africa is to be welcomed as a contribution to the examination of the entrepreneurship process and its effects and impact outside the Global North. This is not the first such study (see, e.g., Akinyoade et al., 2017; Anosike, 2022; Dana et al., 2018; Fick, 2002; Ochonu, 2018; Odeyemi et al., 2024; Ratten and Jones, 2018), and like many of its predecessors it walks a fine line between uncritical celebratory boosterism and critical analysis.
The editors of this book make great claims, both about the process of entrepreneurship development in Africa and about the contribution made by this volume in particular to understanding this process. In terms of Africa, the book is predicated on the argument that ‘as the continent continues to evolve, so too does its entrepreneurial ecosystem, shaping the narrative of prosperity, growth, and sustainable development’ (p. ix), and that ‘Africa’s entrepreneurial story is one of resilience, resourcefulness, and innovation . . . enterprising individuals and dynamic start-ups are forging new paths, contributing to job creation, technology adoption, and wealth generation’ (p. xi). Accordingly, ‘this book provides a comprehensive exploration of the opportunities and hurdles that entrepreneurs encounter on their path to success . . . [and] . . . it sheds light on the critical role of supportive policies, access to finance, mentorship, and cross-sector collaborations in propelling entrepreneurship forward’ (p. ix). As such, it is argued, this book goes ‘beyond the conventional narratives [to] present a nuanced understanding of the challenges, opportunities and success stories that define the entrepreneurial landscape across the continent’ (p. xi). These are lofty ambitions. The key question is, to what extent does the book deliver on these promises?
The book comprises eleven separately authored chapters organised into five sections, together with a short Introduction and Afterword. All but 4 of the 34 contributors are based in the Global South. Part I addresses the role and nature of entrepreneurship in Africa as it is reflected, first, in a literature review-based discussion of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for women’s participation in entrepreneurship, and, second, (using an econometric approach) in the relationship between new business, employment and economic growth in 34 sub-Saharan Africa countries. Part II focuses on the process of business and enterprise development through a case study of the informalisation of small-scale enterprises in Ghana’s gold mining industry, and highlights a number of issues of wider relevance to African entrepreneurship, including the role of the informal economy (Adu-Gyamfi et al., 2023; Ajide and Dada, 2023), the impact of resource-based industries and the legacy of colonialism. Part III examines the management of sustainable enterprises, using as examples brand naming strategies followed by black-owned small and medium-sized enterprises and the use of social media advertising by student entrepreneurs. Part IV comprises a single chapter examining Ghana’s intellectual property regime, which concludes that this is appropriate for larger firms but not for smaller enterprises, with negative consequences for innovation and business development.
Part V on entrepreneurship education and development accounts for almost half of the book: four chapters deal with arts entrepreneurship in theatre and film studies, entrepreneurship education in agriculture and community development, entrepreneurship education activities across universities in Ghana and the entrepreneurial intentions and capacity of undergraduate students. The most interesting and insightful chapter in the section (Chapter 8 by Husein Inusah) examines the relevance of the Entrepreneurial University construct as it has been applied in non-Western contexts (Quacoe et al., 2023). This chapter adopts a critical perspective which is very much at odds with the rest of the volume, and all the more welcome for this. The Entrepreneurial University is seen as a neoliberal construction which is designed to ‘reconstruct the university as a marketplace of technology and innovations . . . [with a] . . . mission of corporatising and commercialising the academy as a profit-generating hub within the global economy’ (p. 131). This is particularly problematic in the African context, as the consequent erosion of the humanities highlights that this emphasis on commercialisation is a distraction in the struggle for decolonising education in Africa, a struggle in which the humanities play a critical role. Given the growing recognition of the need to ‘give voice’ to non-Western perspectives and to critically examine the impact and implications of applying Western concepts and frameworks to non-Western settings, Inusah’s conclusion is salutary: ‘The idea of an Entrepreneurial University . . . promote[s] neoliberalism and fuel[s] the flames of coloniality of education on the African continent. It is in itself a type of academic capitalism being exported into Africa to commodify epistemic goods such as knowledge and education to uphold the existing power imbalance between the Global North and the South . . . To ensure that the humanities are preserved and the agitations for decoloniality are kept alive, it is suggested that entrepreneurial education should be pursued while deploying critical pedagogy to encourage students to question the existing structures of power and oppression through calls to make entrepreneurial education more humanist’ (p. 142). Given the pervasiveness of the ideology of ‘entrepreneurship for all’, the fabricating of a new type of subject and the universalisation of entrepreneurship education in the North American and European contexts (see Brandl and Bullinger, 2009; Bröckling, 2016; Hartmann et al., 2022; Jones and Spicer, 2009; Ogbor, 2000), this is a challenge to which we also need to respond in the Global North.
Notwithstanding the insights raised in many of the individual chapters, there are a number of issues and concerns about the coverage and contents of the book. Specifically, despite the title and the frequent references to ‘Africa’, seven of the eleven chapters are based on data and case studies from Ghana (which is the focus of other recent research – Kimmitt et al., 2024; Nkontwana and Stam, 2023), and there is no attempt to address the issue of the extent to which this single country emphasis can be generalised to the diversity of economies across the continent (an issue which is not unique to this volume – Weber et al., 2023). Africa is a highly diverse continent, and its 54 countries show even more intra-country diversity. Furthermore, the rationale for the structure of and choice of topics to be covered in the book needs to be justified: for example, the chapter on the impact of COVID-19 on women’s entrepreneurship is not an obvious place to begin (and the rationale for such is unclear), the chapters on brand strategy and student entrepreneurs’ use of social media are only weakly connected to the ostensible theme of the book to ‘provide a knowledge hub of entrepreneurship development in Africa’ (p. 195), and perhaps most significantly, there is no substantive introductory overview chapter by the Editors which explores and sets out the key issues in analysing the current state of entrepreneurship development in Africa.
This is compounded by a sense of missed opportunity to develop a more robust and comprehensive approach to entrepreneurship in Africa. For example, in the only empirical multi-country analysis in the book (Chapter 2 on sub-Saharan Africa), it is suggested that ‘Unfortunately, the business environment in Africa does not seem to permit businesses to flourish’ (p. 20) and while the business potential is tremendous, ‘the business environment . . . seems fragile, with a number of obstacles compared with other emerging economies’ (p. 21). Although the analysis does point to a relationship between new business formation and economic growth, data limitations preclude identifying the timescale over which this relationship unfolds, and the authors highlight ongoing issues with the structural, institutional and policy environment which continue to constrain entrepreneurship. This is consistent with other analyses, which recognise that in Africa entrepreneurship is largely informal (Musara and Nieuwenhuizen, 2020), due to weak or even absent formal institutions (Sydow et al., 2022). This is, however, a long way from the narrative of unequivocal prosperity, growth, innovation and sustainable development attributed to ‘African entrepreneurship’ elsewhere in the book, a narrative which the discussion of the Entrepreneurial University robustly challenges.
Finally, the book claims to provide ‘a repository of indigenous practices of entrepreneurship in Africa’ (p. 195). It does so, for the most part, anecdotally and partially. The challenge now is to build on this to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the diverse historical, cultural and socioeconomic contexts of and settings within which African entrepreneurship occurs (Akoorie et al., 2020; Chakraborty et al., 2016; Storr and Colon, 2015), and to use this to ask questions such as ‘What are the key dimensions of entrepreneurship in Africa?’ ‘How and why do these differ across and within countries on the continent?’ ‘What are the implications for entrepreneurship of, for example, the prominence of the informal economy, widespread poverty, conflict and violence and the legacy of colonialism?’ ‘What are the entrepreneurship implications of resource dependent economies (which suffer from a ‘resource curse’: where a dominant export-driven natural resource sector generating large revenues for government leads to corruption, economic stagnation, underdevelopment, and political instability)?’ ‘How does entrepreneurship in Africa differ from its expression elsewhere?’ ‘What is the place of entrepreneurship within the existing structures and power relations of coloniality?’ ‘How can we theorise African entrepreneurship in ways that are consistent with indigenous theorising (Bruton et al., 2022) or ‘rearguard theorizing’ (Santos 2014, 2018)?’ ‘What can we learn from African entrepreneurship in terms of thinking about entrepreneurship in other emerging economy contexts?’ ‘In what ways does the experience of entrepreneurship in Africa challenge our experience of it in Western/Global North contexts?’
Research on the support for and constraints on entrepreneurs and how entrepreneurship supports and leads to sustainable development in Africa lags behind research conducted elsewhere. This lack of research on Africa represents a major omission (Honig et al., 2024), and we still do not fully understand the underlying factors that influence entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship growth in African economies. Given this, and in summarising the contribution of this book to the study of African entrepreneurship, the 1972 Johnny Nash song seems particularly relevant: There are more questions than answers/And the more I find out the less I know. The challenge for researchers in both the Global South and the Global North is to continue to pose hard questions and strive for more insightful and contextualised answers.
