Promoting entrepreneurship: trends, issues and prospects

Abstract

This paper has three objectives encompassed in three sections as follows: First, it tours the labyrinth of concepts characterizing African entrepreneurship to distinguish between owners or operators of micro enterprises, small-sized enterprises, intermediate-sized enterprises and large-scale enterprises and to situate or pinpoint these levels of entrepreneurship in African political economy. Second, the paper examines the constraints on the effectiveness of entrepreneurs operating at these levels in regard to emerging agenda of the 1990s that has just been outlined. And third, the paper distils from the discussion in the first two sections number of practical in sights, policy measures and recommendations for overcoming the constraints contemporary African entrepreneurs face and for promoting entrepreneurship as a vehicle of future growth, better living standards and sustained development. Before turning to this prospectus, it is necessary to define the concept of entrepreneurship.