Introduction: youth entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa

Introduction: youth entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Afric

Expanding the scales and domains of (in)security: youth employment in urban Zambia

Most research on issues of (in)security has tended to have a military/safety angle and focus on global/national scales linked to spectacular events. This paper addresses the overlooked insecurity realities of urban dwellers in the global South through a focus on more persistent and enduring forms of employment insecurities among young people. Building on both quantitative and qualitative data collected in a low-income settlement in Lusaka, Zambia, we explore how young people perceive their employment situation and examine the practices they engage in when seeking ways of making a living. Through analysing their views and experiences we show how employment insecurity is influenced by processes operating at the body, local, national and global scales, and how employment insecurity is closely interconnected with insecurity in other domains of young people's lives including the household, housing and education. Although the youth unemployment situation is often viewed as a serious threat to human security, we show how the lack of stable employment in itself is a manifestation of insecurity

Youth employment in a globalising world

Young people in the global South are seeking employment opportunities in challenging economic and social environments. This paper provides an overview of current debates regarding youth employment, highlighting conceptualisations of youth and (un)employment, emerging youth employment trends and the nature of policies introduced to tackle youth (un)employment. It provides an overview of the six papers that make up this special issue and shows how highlighting the complexities and diversities of youth employment strategies in sub-Saharan Africa provides valuable lessons, both for enhancing current conceptualisations and theorisation of youth employment and in terms of related policy instruments

Report from a workshop 6-8 September 2010

This working paper is a report from the workshop on Entrepreneurship Development arranged by the Centre for Business and Development Studies at CBS and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September 2010. The objective of the workshop was to use the participants’ joint knowledge and experiences to discuss and provide conclusions on what role entrepreneurship development has played and can play to stimulate growth and employment in Africa. Entrepreneurship development is understood as the promotion and development of activities and processes that foster and support productive entrepreneurship in the society. The workshop should provide inputs to how entrepreneurship in Africa can be supported and be used in the development and implementation of the “Growth and Employment” priority of the new Danish strategy for development cooperation. The workshop had twenty participants with long standing insight to the challenges of entrepreneurship development and employment growth in Africa from international organizations, development cooperation partners, universities and private enterprises and organizations. The report contains the key issues discussed at the workshop and ends with conclusions and recommendations

Strategic Response under Market and Institutional Uncertainty in the Tanzanian Food Processing Industry

Infant industry structures, weak institutions, wide spread market failures and lack of trust permeate the Tanzanian business environment. Nevertheless, some local enterprises succeed in overcoming these challenges. This paper seeks to understand the strategies of these enterprises. Drawing on case studies of Tanzanian enterprises in the food processing industry, we identify six generic coping strategies which contrast markedly with the kind of strategies conventional strategic management thinking would prescribe: Instead of focus strategies, Tanzanian enterprises diversify across industries and value chain functions; Instead of competitive strategies, Tanzanian enterprises embark on network and political strategies; And instead of internationalizing based on home-market strengths, Tanzanian enterprises internationalize in response to home-market weaknesses. We characterize the strategies adopted by Tanzanian enterprises and discuss implications for the strategic management literature

Bounded entrepreneurial vitality: the mixed embeddedness of female entrepreneurship

Despite the recent increased interest in female entrepreneurs, attention has tended to focus on dynamic individuals and generic incentives without considering the roles of gender and place in entrepreneurship. In this article, we draw on the notion of mixed embeddedness to explore how time-and-place–specific institutional contexts influence women’s entrepreneurship. Drawing on primary data collected in Ghana, where exceptionally more women engage in entrepreneurial activities than men, we examine the scale and characteristics of female entrepreneurial activity, exploring the factors that account for this strong participation of women, and examine whether this high entrepreneurial rate is also reflected in their performance and growth aspirations. The findings reveal a disjuncture between, on the one hand, the vibrant entrepreneurial endeavors of Ghanaian women and positive societal attitudes toward female entrepreneurship and, on the other hand, female business activities characterized by vulnerability and relatively low achievement. The article shows how regulatory, normative, and cultural–cognitive institutional forces, which have been transformed over time by local and global processes and their interaction, are concomitantly propelling and impeding women’s entrepreneurial activities. We propose that the study of female entrepreneurs within economic geography could be advanced by analyzing the differing effects of the complex, multiple, and shifting layers of institutional contexts in which they are embedded

Youth employment in a globalising world

This article was accepted for publication in the journal, International Development Planning Review [© Liverpool University Press] and the definitive version is available at: http://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/idpr.2013.7Young people in the global South are seeking employment opportunities in challenging economic and social environments. This paper provides an overview of current debates regarding youth employment, highlighting conceptualisations of youth and (un)employment, emerging youth employment trends and the nature of policies introduced to tackle youth (un)employment. It provides an overview of the six papers that make up this special issue and shows how highlighting the complexities and diversities of youth employment strategies in sub-Saharan Africa provides valuable lessons, both for enhancing current conceptualisations and theorisation of youth employment and in terms of related policy instruments