Universities, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development in Africa, Sankt Augustin, Germany, 10-11 November 2016
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Access to affordable energy - for basic needs as well as for national economic development - is a crucial concern for developing countries. Access to modern and sustainable energy services in rural areas, where the majority of the population is living in poverty, is a particularly urgent challenge, and one which has been recognized as crucial within the global development agenda.
The current dominant development model, focused on achieving macro-economic growth, gives priority to large-scale or centralized energy infrastructures for national growth or for meeting the urban demand. Rural areas of poorer countries are often at a disadvantage in terms of access to all types of services – roads, health facilities, markets, information and clean water. The high cost of providing these services in remote areas has led to new approaches being tried, based on self-help and the private sector rather than traditional government-led solutions. The missing access to electricity is primarily the reason for the poor operational environment of entrepreneurship especially in rural areas of developing countries, which poses many barriers to their development and limits their competitiveness. Energy services for household, agriculture and production serve as best examples as sectors exposed to enable entrepreneurship by productive use of renewable energy.
This paper describes the line-up, the challenges and the outcome of a development project in rural Ethiopia to support entrepreneurship based on the usage of renewable energy, in this case mainly photo-voltaic technology. In particular, this study tries to show up key features which are required to enable sustainable energy access and foster implementation challenges of developed business models in practice. Based on this experience, the paper discusses implications and lessons learned for a further development.
The non-farm sector is critical for the socio-economic development of Ghana especially the rural poor. Literature suggest that people engage in non-farm enterprises as a way out of poverty or a survival strategy, perhaps as a substitute for the landless. This paper analyses the determinants of individual participation in non-farm enterprises and the intensity of participation. The paper uses EGC/ISSER Socio-Economic Panel Survey data collected in 2009. The paper estimated the determinants of participation using a probit model and then estimated the intensity of participation using a truncated regression model. The results indicate that majority of women (about 73%) are engaged in non-farm enterprises in rural Ghana. The study found that females tended to participate more in non-farm self-employment and are less likely to participate in non-farm wage employment. The results further showed that individual characteristics such as the gender of the individual, being head of a household, being the spouse of a household head, having formal education, age of the individual, having access to credit, possessing a mobile phone, per capita landing holding and ownership of livestock influenced the participation of individuals in self-and wage employment. Results from truncated regression model for self-employed enterprises showed that having access to mobile phones, owning more livestock and electricity are important in determining the intensity of participation in self-employed enterprises. For wage-employment, being a household head, spouse of household head, having access to mobile phone and owning more livestock increased the number of days working on wage employment. Education is relevant for employment in the non-farm sector especially wage-employment. Government should play a lead role in making formal education accessible to the rural people. Deliberate policies should focus on addressing critical factors such as access to credit, mobile phone, electricity and education which are relevant for increasing participation intensity in rural enterprises.
Over the past decades, growing trends in social media, e-literacy and globalisation have led to the increased use of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) in offices, schools, homes, hospitals and other institutions. Although, there are more efforts at introducing diversity, innovation and increased use of EEE, there had been limited effort at managing the end?of?life of these electronic devices. Evidence from previous research showed that the management of the end of life of electronic waste is highly dominated by Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in the informal sector who employ more crude technology in their operations. This exploratory study therefore, sought to examine the activities of corporate bodies and MSMEs (formal and informal) in the e-waste sector in the Accra and Kumasi Metropolitan Areas in Ghana. Data was collected via questionnaires and interview from randomly selected respondents in the two metropolises. Results reveal that even though corporate institutions import a lot of electrical and electronic equipment, they do not have any policies on disposal of the e-waste generated. Thus, a high percentage of the e-waste generated is processed by the informal sector. The implications of the results are that policy makers and other stakeholders should encourage MSMEs to formalize their activities, support investment and green business development as well as funding and training for MSMEs operating in the sector.
Media development cooperation has aimed for decades at enhancing free and independent media in developing countries as well as economies in transition. Within this field of activity, the concept of media viability has gained more and more attention in recent years. This is mainly due to a proposal of UNESCO`s intergovernmental Bureau of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC). The UNESCO, in partnership with DW Akademie, has drafted a list of indicators that delineate the influencing factors of media viability for media organizations in any given country (UNESCO 2015).
As a consequence of the novelty of the media viability concept, the state of scientific research is restricted. It is frequently focused on isolated case studies without providing a scientific basis for comparison. Empirical studies and comparative analyses are limited to certain media sectors such as the print market, as well as for journalism startups and spin-offs in developed economies.
In today’s business, culture plays a vital role or to a high degree influences the attitude, perception and decision making process of an individual. Culture is an unavoidable state of rules and regulations that defines people’s daily life in a particular environment or society. There are plenty examples of business failures or stagnation or failure of joint ventures, on account of the management's inability to recognize cross-cultural challenges and tackle them appropriately.
Entrepreneurship education serves a conduit for new venture creation as it provides the knowledge and skills needed to increase the self-efficacy of individuals to start and run new businesses and to grow existing ones. This study, therefore, sought to assess the relationship between the approaches to the teaching of entrepreneur-ship and entrepreneurial intention on a cohort of 292 respondents consisting of students who have studied entrepreneurship in three selected Universities. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data randomly from students. The canonical correlation results indicate that education for and through entrepreneurship is the best approach to promoting entrepreneurial intensity among University students, if the aim of teaching entrepreneur-ship is to promote start-up activities. The findings provide valuable insights for institutions of higher learning and policy makers in Ghana with respect to the appropriate methodologies to be adopted in the teaching of entrepreneurship in our universities.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are engine of economy both for developed and developing countries. They play a significant role in income generation, job creation, poverty reduction and reducing income inequality. In Burundi, key stakeholders such as policy-makers as well as other international and national actors have made more effort to develop the segment of SMEs. Indeed, many start-ups have been created but are however, exposed to several challenges in their business operations. This paper aimed at investigating main critical barriers to SMEs growth and development in Burundi. The research was based upon a sample survey of small firms in Burundi and 314 small enterprises were surveyed. Rural start-ups’ critical barriers identified are mainly poor management, lack of access to market flow, lack of working capital, inadequate qualified workforce and low selling prices. On the other hand, five severe obstacles for urban SMEs identified are insecurity, access to financing, macroeconomic situation, lack of customers and unfair competition. A better understanding of all these barriers that SMEs are facing is useful to set up best strategies susceptible to increase their growth.
Culture is at the core of any social, economic and business interactions and relationships. The way people perceive the culture of others influences their decision to collaborate socially, politically and economically with them. It is therefore, imperative students appreciate the dynamics of cross-cultural interactions and collaborations, since it exposes them to a wider view of the world. In doing this, it is important they (students) are allowed to explore as much as possible with little interference by their teachers. Using the project students went through real-life experience in a self-directed enquiry. In the process, they were taught to solve problems encountered during the learning process. The focus of the intercultural communication project was to understand how people from different cultures speak, interact and perceive others’ culture. It was found students innovate if allowed to explore a certain phenomenon on their own. Furthermore, face-to-face meetings can be arranged between people in the different countries can be arranged using these Web 2.0 tools. Based on the experience from the project, it was observed that the success of a collaborative international project depends on the understanding of the crosscultural dynamics of partners. For such collaborations, it is imperative to establish personal relationships, be flexible and adaptable to situations and change as well as being swift resolving potential conflict situation.
This study sought to determine the relationship between entrepreneurial education and youth employability and economic development in Kenya. A descriptive cross sectional design was used to collect data, with the main data collection instrument being a semi structured questionnaire. The population of the study comprised the micro, small and medium scale enterprises in Nairobi, Kenya. Out of the 100 questionnaires issued, 93 were completed and returned giving a response rate of 93%. Descriptive analysis (means and standard deviations ) and inferential analysis was used to analyze the data. Regression and correlation analysis was done to test the hypotheses. It was found that several indicators of entrepreneurial education had a significantly positive influence on youth employability. For example, entrepreneurial education enhances opportunity recognition as an indicator of entrepreneurial education was statistically significantly correlated with the statement that entrepreneurship endeavor is an employment alternative as an indicator of youth employability (r = 331**, P = 0.01). Similarly, the statement that entrepreneurial education sharpens competitiveness had a significantly positive influence on the statement that entrepreneurship endevour is an employment alternative (r =.313** P = 0.01). The overall model for entrepreneurial education and youth employability had an R Square value of 0.151, and an F value of 3.086, (p = 0.013 < 0.05), indicating that the influence is significant at the 0.05 level. The study found that most indicators of youth employability had a significantly positive correlation with indicators of economic development. It was found that there was a significant positive correlation between entrepreneurial education enhances new product and service development and entrepreneurial education reduces youth unemployment (r =0.304**, P = 0.01), while entrepreneurial education enhances new product and service development also has a positive correlation with entrepreneurial education reduces youth unemployment (.304** , P = 0.01). The overall model for youth employability and economic development had an R square value of .087 and F value of 2.103, p =0.87 > 0.05, indication that although youth employability is responsible for 8.7% of economic development, the effect is not statistically significant. The implication for this is that entrepreneurial education should be encouraged as a way of enhancing entrepreneurial thinking among the youth, so that they can use this to venture into self employment. However, this study did not find a significant direct link between youth employability and economic development, and this can only be implied. We suggest increased government support for entrepreneurship training and for closer industry university collaboration and partnerships in order to accelerate economic development.
Universities, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development in Africa – Conference Proceedings 2016
(2017)
These proceedings are the outcome of the 5th annual joint conference on “Universities Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development in Africa” between the University of Nairobi, Kenya, the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, and Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany, held on 10-11 November 2016 on Campus Sankt Augustin, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences.