Abstract
Africa is known as the lost continent. A reason for this is due to the lack of economic development in comparison to other parts of the world. Sadly, Africa is still the poorest region on earth.
Given the importance of self-employment for the African economic development, entrepreneurship offers a great hope for changing the development, for the better, in many African countries. This also means there is a need for a higher degree of entrepreneurial activities. The Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) for countries in the southern African region is high, with the exception of South Africa (Herrington & Kelley, 2013). This gives optimism that the economic situation can improve in most of these countries over time, especially in reducing the high unemployment rate.
The appeal of entrepreneurship is that everybody can become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship starts with individuals who take responsibilities for themselves and make full use of the available resources in the best possible way for them.
Governments can have a positive impact on entrepreneurship through, for example, education and training as well as privatisation and taxation. The role of governments in the formulation of policies is directed towards promoting entrepreneurship. It is not the function of government to create jobs directly, but they can definitely play a critical role in creating a climate that encourages and promotes new business start-ups. It is their job to make it easier, faster and less costly to start a new business.
Compared to research on entrepreneurship elsewhere in the world, entrepreneurship research in Africa is relatively lacking (Kiggundu, 2002). It is of great importance to conduct good research in African countries, because we are unsure that Western models will be useful and successful in Africa. I am happy to say that it was possible to select five interesting and valuable academic articles for this special issue of the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, dedicated to the issues of entrepreneurship in Africa. These articles were first presented as papers for the refereed 14th International Entrepreneurship Forum Conference, held in Cape Town, South Africa in September 2015. Subsequent developments have now produced this interesting and highly topical crop of articles for all to obtain useful insights into entrepreneurship in Africa.
The following refereed articles are mainly on entrepreneurial activities in the southern African region, especially in South Africa.
In his article ‘Industrial Centres of Competence’, Nawaz Mahomed gives an overview of centres of competence, which have already been proven to be successfully implemented in the Scandinavian countries. In his South African case study, in the agriculture and forestry sectors, he includes an assessment of innovation capabilities of regions, an analysis of supportive government development frameworks and the identification of technology platforms to support entrepreneurial activities. His case study is of specific importance to South Africa, because it provides a structured innovation framework, from innovation support to market development, with targeted investment.
Arthur Price’s article ‘Leveraging Technology to Bridge the Gap between Independent Artists and Reaching the Right Consumer’ is a specialised, yet highly interesting topic, not only for South Africans, dealing with the question on how the independent artist can reach the right consumer to create a sustainable revenue source through sales of their music.
Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are the backbone of the economy of all African countries. They are responsible for more than 50 per cent of the GDP and by far more than 50 per cent of the employment of these countries. A major problem, of course, is the high failure rate of SMEs (Isaacs & Friedrich, 2010). While large companies are not expanding employment in South Africa and the Civil Service is laying off people, SMEs are creating employment. Thus, the success of the SME sector is of vital importance for the future of South Africa. Mavimbela and Dube, in the article ‘Can an Internet Adoption Framework be Developed for SMEs in South Africa’, investigate the interesting question of whether a development and implementation of such a framework can make the SMEs more successful. To achieve these objectives, it would be necessary to improve the development of infrastructure, the promotion of human skills, better access to finance and to create a more attractive business environment.
Gauteng province is the commercial hub of South Africa. It contributes over a third of South Africa’s GDP. In their article ‘Envisioning Public Sector Pathways: Gauteng as an Entrepreneurial Province in South Africa’, Bbenkele and Madikiza investigate and discuss the possibility of an entrepreneurial state. Besides the situation in South Africa, they study the Asian countries, which have partly successfully implemented state led economic development and conclude that there are still many obstacles that have to be overcome to make this workable. Gauteng province would be a viable option for a prototype of an entrepreneurial state in South Africa.
Sethibe and Steyn, in their article, use a systematic literature review methodology to investigate the causal path between organisational climate, innovation and organisational performance, which is an important issue for organisations to survive the competitive challenges. The article shows shortfall and problems in part of the literature reviewed. It highlights the importance of identifying constructs and building blocks. This can help future research to be aware of the importance of clear and shared definitions of constructs.