Reflections on entrepreneurship education in African tertiary institutions

It is a well-established fact that several developed economies grew on the back of small businesses and entrepreneurial development. It stands to reason then that the development of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) can also be catalysed by a rise in the number of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial activity. In that general regard, this paper sought to investigate the state of entrepreneurship education in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The method adopted in investigating this phenomenon was to critique the existing tertiary education entrepreneurship structures (where these existed at all) and to proffer recommendations where anomalies were discovered. It came to light that despite the critical importance of entrepreneurs in the economic development of a nation, Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have not fully developed strategies to tap this resource. What the countries have, are haphazard policies designed to promote the lesser or uneducated individuals in the informal sector into entrepreneurship. SSA educational leaders must find ways to structure their curricula so that all or most of their students can take courses in entrepreneurship. This is essential for SSA countries in order to move them from their present disadvantaged economic status, to greater economic and social development. A tentative syllabus for African tertiary education is proffered at the end of the article but its robustness needs to be tested

The Barriers to Growth in Ghana

This paper presents the results of ordered logit regression models of the problems faced by 500 entrepreneurs from six regions of Ghana against the characteristics of the entrepreneurs and their businesses and whether these were systematically related to a list of 37 factors that they perceived as limiting their ability to achieve their objectives in the period 2002–2005. The results show that the education, but not the sex or age of the entrepreneurs were related to business barriers. Family Businesses, growing businesses, those providing training and those which did not spend money on R&D were more likely to encounter business barriers. The findings of the research also revealed that in general firms in conurbations were more likely to encounter barriers