- All Posts
- Publications
By Erik Stam, Phumlani Nkontwana, Robert McDonald, Rafiki Murenzi, Kwabena A. Addo, Blaise Bayuo, Belinda Baah, Stefan Riezebos, Tim Gelissen Abstract Productive entrepreneurship is highly needed for economic growth and development in Africa. For this to happen, the conditions for productive entrepreneurship need to be improved. However, data on the conditions for productive entrepreneurship in the African continent are scarce, which makes it very difficult to improve these conditions and interventions in a context-specific way. We tackle this challenge and source data from various public, private, global, and African sources. We use an entrepreneurial ecosystem framework to select, make sense of, and integrate this data. We use an extensive set of 21 empirical indicators to measure seven dimensions of national entrepreneurial ecosystems in Africa and to compose the Africa Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Index. This index and the underlying data aim to facilitate large-scale research on entrepreneurial ecosystems and collective learning for improving entrepreneurial ecosystems in Africa. Read the full article here. Authors: Erik Stam, Phumlani Nkontwana, Robert McDonald, Rafiki Murenzi, Kwabena A. Addo, Blaise Bayuo, Belinda Baah, Stefan Riezebos, and Tim Gelissen.
This study analyzes the contextual frameworks of existing entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) models through a systematic bibliometric analysis of 684 Scopus-indexed publications from 2000 to 2023. Using VOSviewer, the research uncovers key themes like informality, necessity-driven entrepreneurship, digital adaptation, and alternative finance, ultimately refining current EE models and offering policy guidance aligned with SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).
A study based on the Western Cape entrepreneurial ecosystem advances scholarship by demonstrating that these systems can be intentionally designed through collaborative processes, moving beyond the view that they are solely emergent phenomena.
This comprehensive report, commissioned by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and authored by i4Policy, explores the current state, challenges, and opportunities of agroforestry development in Ghana. It highlights agroforestry’s potential for sustainable development but notes its limitations, particularly a strong focus on cocoa-based systems despite the potential for other crops and ecological zones.
A case study of the ADDIS Decision Thinking methodology applied in Nigeria to support the co-creation of the Nigeria Startup Act. The case study illuminates several heuristics for innovative policy-making developed by i4Policy under the ICT58 Horizon 2020 grant for the African European Digital Innovation Bridge Network (AEDIB|NET).
Why Africa’s ‘Big Four’ are not the ‘Best Four’. A few years ago, The Economist concluded that Africa has enterprising people but too few businesses. Africans are far more likely to be self-employed than people in richer parts of the world, but the continent does not produce enough productive and profitable small and medium-sized businesses. More small and medium-sized businesses would increase productivity, reduce poverty, create more and better jobs and address many other societal challenges. The key question is: How can the conditions for entrepreneurship, business creation and growth, be improved in Africa?
There is a growing interest in ecosystems as an approach for understanding the context of entrepreneurship at the macro level of an organizational community. It consists of all the interdependent actors and factors that enable and constrain entrepreneurship within a particular territory. Although growing in popularity, the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept remains loosely defined and measured. This paper shows the value of taking a systems view of the context of entrepreneurship: understanding entrepreneurial economies from a systems perspective.
Entrepreneurial ecosystems have become a prominent concept, yet in its current state, the concept itself represents a paradox. While it draws on a rich intellectual history and provides an opportunity to synthesize different strands of research, it is also under-theorized and the mechanisms that govern ecosystem evolution are not well understood.
Despite the popularity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach in science and policy, there is a scarcity of credible, accurate and comparable metrics of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This is a severe shortcoming for both scientific progress and successful policy. In this paper, we bridge the entrepreneurial ecosystem metrics gap.
A deliberate approach to centre African female entrepreneurs in policymaking and provide a candid snapshot of life as a female entrepreneur in Africa
The Benchmark report identifies 22 African SBAs and Startup Acts, benchmarks them and identifies 15 other instruments for comparison. Find out what the highlights are and learn from our recommendations.
The Pan-African Policy Taskforce is a participant-led platform co-led by Smart Africa Alliance, i4Policy and The Tony Blair Institute and the Allan Gray Centre for Africa Entrepreneurship (AGCAE). The Taskforce was created from a collective need voiced by the African startup ecosystem to cultivate connections, enable the flow of information, and provide a venue where specific expertise, learnings and best practice can be shared.