The importance of entrepreneurship as an engine for innovation, economic growth, job creation and wealth especially in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa cannot be overemphasized. Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa examines the socio-cultural, global, economic, financial, political, infrastructure and organizational contexts of entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, the book presents a strategic management approach for the management of entrepreneurial and small business ventures in the region. Written with a focus on theory and practice, the book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses in business and management studies and as a reference tool for practicing and prospective entrepreneurs, small business owners and economic change agents. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Small Business Management, Sub-Saharan Africa, Strategic Management, Marketing, Globalization, Business Plan, Socio-cultural, financial, political, institutional, infrastructure and organizational contexts. Number of pages: 684

This book offers an original collection of international studies on indigenous entrepreneurship. Through these specific lenses, entrepreneurship greatly appears as a set of cultural values-based behaviours. Once more culture and human values are placed at the heart of entrepreneurship as an economic and social phenomenon.'. - Alain Fayolle, EM Lyon and CERAG Laboratory, France and Solvay Business School, Belgium. `A must-have for researchers of developmental economics, as well as for entrepreneurship scholars, this collection assembles studies of indigenous entrepreneurship from five continent.

This pioneering collection seeks to understand why and how some digital enterprises in Africa progress while others firms either stagnate or regress. Using a range of detailed case studies, it addresses the challenges and barriers that are in place and how some outstanding digital firms deal with operating in a hostile business environment. While digital platforms have created equal access for small businesses, many digital entrepreneurs in Africa continue to struggle with local environments replete with corruption, and other economic inefficiencies. The contributions move the debate forward by addressing the challenges, opportunities, and prospects of digital enterprise in Africa. Placing special emphasis on how African new entrant digital firms are shaping the landscape and forging a new beginning for Africa, this book offers entrepreneurial perspectives to both researchers and policy-makers seeking to support and stimulate entrepreneurship in the new era.

According to a 2018 World Bank report, Africa is the only region with more women than men choosing to become entrepreneurs – a phenomenon that is not the subject of adequate discussion. This book reveals the latest research-based understanding of the entrepreneurial activities of women in sub-Saharan Africa. Specially invited subject experts present salient dimensions of entrepreneurship by African women, from environmental factors to motivations and influencers as well as financial and non-financial constraints, and highlight the significant role of cultural differences. This book provides a mixture of theoretical, conceptual, and empirical research, and fills the knowledge gap by presenting a wide range of opportunities and challenges faced by sub-Saharan African women entrepreneurs. This book will help policy makers and academic researchers in understanding the role of institutions and entrepreneurship policy in building a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region.

This innovative book traces women’s entrepreneurial journeys in Sub-Saharan Africa, examining the linkages between entrepreneurship, gender and development context. With extensive case studies of women’s experiences across the enterprise life-cycle, it gives new insight into how to support and empower Sub-Saharan African female entrepreneurs.

The report assesses the World Bank Group?s support for growth and productivity in the agriculture sector. Enhancing agricultural growth and productivity is essential to meeting the worldwide demand for food and to reducing poverty, particularly in the poorest developing countries. Between 1998 and 2008, the period covered by this evaluation, the World Bank Group (WBG) provided $23.7 billion in financing for agriculture and agribusiness in 108 countries (roughly 8 percent of total WBG financing), spanning areas from irrigation and marketing to research and extension. However, this was a time of declining focus on agricultural growth and productivity by both countries and donors. The cost of inadequate attention to agriculture, especially in agriculture-based economies, came into focus with the food crisis of 2007-08. The crisis added momentum to an emerging renewal of attention and stepped-up financing to agriculture and agribusiness at the World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC), as well as at several multilateral and bilateral agencies. World Bank financing rose two and a half times from 2008 to 2009, though that increase in lending seems to have been accompanied by a decline in analytical work, which this review finds valuable for results. This evaluation seeks to provide lessons from successes and failures to help improve the development impact of the renewed attention to the sector. Ratings against the World Bank?s stated objectives and IFC?s market-based benchmarks for agriculture and agribusiness projects have been equal to or above portfolio averages in East Asia, Latin America, and the transition economies in Europe, with notable successes over a long period in China and India. But performance of WBG interventions has been well below average in Sub-Saharan Africa, where IFC has had little engagement in agribusiness. Inconsistent client commitment and weak capacity have limited the effectiveness of WBG support in agriculture-based economies, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, and constraints on staffing and internal coordination within the WBG have also hurt outcomes. Financial sustainability has been constrained by insufficient government funding and the difficulty of maintaining agricultural services and infrastructure. The WBG has a unique opportunity to match the increases in the financing for agriculture with sharper focus on improving agricultural growth and productivity in agriculture-based economies, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa. Greater effort will be needed to connect sectoral interventions and achieve synergies from public and private sector interventions; to build capacity and knowledge exchange; to take stock of experience in rain-fed agriculture; to ensure attention to financial sustainability and to cross-cutting issues of gender, environmental and social impacts, and climate; and to better integrate WBG support at the global and regional levels with that at the country level.