Title: Nurturing opportunity entrepreneurs in Africa: some lessons from Ethiopia

Authors: Tigineh Mersha, Ven Sriram, Melkrist Hailu

Addresses: Department of Management and Marketing, University of Baltimore, 1420 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA. ' Department of Management and Marketing, University of Baltimore, 1420 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA. ' United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Abstract: This paper presents the distinguishing features of opportunity and necessity entrepreneurs and identifies the challenges encountered by each based on an exploratory study in Ethiopia. Then, it proposes a set of policy interventions that can enable these entrepreneurs to overcome the identified barriers and accelerate their growth. This paper suggests that in order to be effective, policy interventions should be tailored to the unique needs of opportunity and necessity entrepreneurs rather than using a generic |one-size-fits-all| approach. This finding has potentially important implications for strengthening entrepreneurship in Africa and other emerging nations.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; Africa; emerging nations; opportunity entrepreneurs; Ethiopia; necessity entrepreneurs; policy interventions; barriers; growth acceleration; unique needs; generic policies; one-size-fits-all; globalisation; business advancement.

DOI: 10.1504/JGBA.2010.033200

Journal for Global Business Advancement, 2010 Vol.3 No.2, pp.155 - 175

Published online: 12 May 2010 *

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