Graduate entrepreneurship in Tanzania: Contextual enablers and hindrances

In Tanzania, despite efforts in teaching entrepreneurship at universities, recent tracer-studies have reported falling rates of graduate self-employment. Among the factors that contribute to this decline, the Tanzanian entrepreneurial environment plays an ambivalent role. Based on the concept of entrepreneurial embeddedness, the personal stories of ten Tanzanian graduate entrepreneurs are content-analyzed. The results suggest that embeddedness in the social environment is not of a singular but of a mixed nature. Tanzanian graduate entrepreneurs operate in a developing environment characterized by complex, partly converging and partly conflicting contextual forces, which simultaneously advance and impede entrepreneurial activities. On the one hand, the changed political climate, strong family ties, emerging links with countries like China, and improved banking and taxation systems are among the factors conducive to graduate entrepreneurship in Tanzania. On the other hand, however, the lack of start-up capital, inhibitive banking and taxation, issues of trust, poor technology, corruption, and cheap imports from countries such as China discourage graduate entrepreneurs' business ventures. While current national policies emphasize graduate entrepreneurship, there is a failure to implement these policies at lower government level. Amidst inflexible higher learning institutions, educators are challenged to innovate ways in which entrepreneurship courses will address issues that entrepreneurs face in Tanzania.Full Tex

Crowdfunding Education : Objectives, Content, Pedagogy, and Assessment

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Business Incubation in Dar es Salaam

Business incubation is increasingly emphasized on development agendas globally as a tool for entrepreneurship, employment and economic growth. Previous studies focus on comparing European and US business incubators, and outcomes of business incubation in sub-Saharan African settings are comparatively unknown. This paper contributes to the understanding of business incubation in Tanzania by focusing on three themes of business incubation identi fi ed from 43 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and people working with entrepreneurs in Dar es Salaam: 1. The role of the entrepreneur and how it in fl uences business incubation; 2. The business incubator aim and outcome; 3. Perceived constraints for business incubation in Dar es Salaam. Findings include: 1. The variety of entrepreneurship demands additional types of support to generate a valuable contribution; 2. There is a risk that business incubators become excluding organizations, cementing existing roles in society; 3. Business incubators may compensate for constraints on entrepreneurship, but it is important to make them fi t local needs