Promoting African Pioneers in Business: what Makes a Context Conducive to Small-Scale Entrepreneurship?

Abstract

This article aims at improving our understanding of the preconditions for success for the millions of unemployed workers in Africa struggling to build their own businesses. Based on some ’classical ’ entrepreneurship theory, a simple three-step process model of business development makes the starting point for discussing empirical findings from two case studies in Arusha, Tanzania. The case study methodology takes the advantage of the actor approach, viewing the business context from the point of view of an individual entrepreneur. The potential role of mentors is underlined for ’strengthening entrepreneurial attitudes’. A platform of knowledge and access to information is crucial for ’picking business opportunities’, The role of government is limited only to providing support in ’navigating towards success’. It is underlined that policies should aim at promoting true innovators, not only copyists.