Eye on growing culture of entrepreneurship in Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa

While formal employment is still highly prized, some encouraging trends are emerging. Opportunity-driven entrepreneurship is becoming respectable in sub-Saharan Africa countries, in place of erstwhile entrepreneurial culture on the continent, largely defined by necessity-driven entrepreneurship; that is, entrepreneurship as a means of survival. This viewed entrepreneurship as a last resort, as opposed to the pursuit of an opportunity or aspiration.

‘‘We are happy to report that a culture of entrepreneurship is growing in sub-Saharan Africa, with indicators related to entrepreneurial motivations at least on par with or higher than global peers,’’ Omidyar Network Africa’s managing director, Malik Fal, said at the just-concluded ‘Accelerating Entrepreneurship in Africa’ forum in Lagos. The forum seeks to understand Africa’s challenges to creating opportunity-driven entrepreneurship.

‘‘There is been changes in the world of jobs, with restructuring happening in the market. People are choosing their career paths, preferring to secure their own income, and not waiting for anyone to offer them jobs,’’ Fal told BusinessDay.

According to Entrepreneurship in Africa 2013 report by the Omidyar Network in partnership with Monitor Group, more than three-quarters of Kenyan and Ethiopian respondents now believe that most people consider becoming an entrepreneur a desirable career choice. The same holds true for 64 percent of respondents in Tanzania, 51 percent in Ghana, 49 percent in Nigeria, and 44 percent in South Africa. Maybe even more important, is the high number of Afro-entrepreneurs who agree with the statement, ‘People who successfully start new firms have a higher level of respect than a manager in a corporate:’ 78 percent in Ethiopia, 63 percent in Kenya, 55 percent in Tanzania, 55 percent in Nigeria, 54 percent in Ghana, and 47 percent in South Africa.

Despite these positive signs, however, the business landscape in sub-Saharan Africa provides a number of challenges that prospective entrepreneurs must transcend. The greatest challenge facing entrepreneurs across Africa being financing, skills and talent, infrastructure, according to the report.

‘‘Nigeria’s key challenges lie in inadequate access to capital for new businesses, unreliable infrastructure, poor provision of support services and skills development,’’ Fal said in a presentation.

‘Infrastructure should first be deployed and upgraded in selected productive areas, where there are substantial business activity and strategically important local industries, including educating entrepreneurs about possible sources of funding outside the banking systems, as well as providing generous incentives and subsidies for private-sector players offering business development services,’’ he recommended.

The Omidyar Network, in its bid to better understand the state of entrepreneurship in Africa, launched the ‘Accelerating Entrepreneurship in Africa Initiative’ in 2012, in partnership with Monitor Group, which sought to identify the challenges facing African entrepreneurs and pinpoint the most trenchant barriers that inhibit high-impact entrepreneurship. The first phase of the initiative commenced with a survey of 582 entrepreneurs in six sub-Saharan African countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania.

Country highlights: Nigeria

According to the report, Nigeria ranks top on the Motivations Composite Indicator chart, above its sub-Saharan Africa and global peers. The survey not only found supporting evidence of a strong, entrepreneurial culture in Nigeria, but also identified a series of specific attitudes towards the legitimacy of entrepreneurship. ‘‘Nigerians have strong attitudes and respect towards wealth, overconfidence in their managerial capacity and a limited fear of failure,’’ Fal said also in a presentation.

Positive entrepreneurial culture is also enhanced by a growing network of formal and informal business-membership organisations that have provided entrepreneurs with a platform to share information and engage with new business partners. These positive perceptions regarding business support are partly being influenced by government programmes, according to the report.

In more recent years, innovative approaches have been taken to encourage and support small business development. One such example is the Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin) programme, a joint initiative by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Communication Technology, the Ministry of Youth Development and the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development

Stories by NONSO NDUMANYA