Theorising entrepreneurship in Africa through a postcolonial lens

Entrepreneurship is important for Africa’s growth. Research on African entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial activities continue to show an ‘against the grain’ nature, yet most theorisations of these activities remain driven by western philosophical paradigms. For example, the growth of entrepreneurship in Africa is often applauded for its economic and human development contributions but limited attention is given to features of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and institutional environments that could hinder access to resources and perpetuate economic divisions among African entrepreneurs. This contested view of entrepreneurship in Africa backs the need for a more contextual understanding of the situation. The focus of this chapter is to address the neglect of more context sensitive approaches to researching entrepreneurship in Africa. We start by acknowledging the utmost colonial reality of this region, making a point that colonial ways of managing continue to influence the region’s governance post-independence. As a prime feature of Africa’s formal and informal institutions, this has been widely underlooked in researching entrepreneurship in Africa, both in terms of theorising and conceptualising the phenomenon at micro and macro levels. Thus, we propose the use of postcolonial theory, a useful analytical tool that allows theorising ‘against the grain’.

To do this, the first part of the chapter will provide a critical theoretical overview of academic research on entrepreneurship in Africa, a discussion of how these fail to account for the realities of the context. This is followed by a descriptive overview of the ‘holy trinity' of postcolonial studies: Edward Said’s idea about the misrepresentation of the Orient by the Occident, Homi Bhabha’s concept of the ‘third space’ and Gayatri Spivak’s concept of subalternity. In the second part, we use the three theorisations to lay the foundation of existing global measurements of entrepreneurial activity in Africa and how these theorisations are relevant to providing a real account of African realities. We draw mainly on secondary sources such as journal articles, government documents and other published sources. We justify the use of postcolonial theory by analysing the region’s colonial history, its large informal sector, heterogeneous population of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship policy-making. We contextualise this further by using the cases of Kenya and Mauritius, two African countries where entrepreneurship is seen as a key driver of the economy. Kenya is chosen as it is a key example where entrepreneurs in the informal sector, the ‘Jua Kali’, continue to support entrepreneurial growth within the restrictive parameters of being informal. This furthers our understanding of how informal entrepreneurship remains the backbone of many African societies, showing a sign of resistance to formalisation while also remaining overtly underrepresented and silenced in global statistics and research. Mauritius is chosen as it is one of the fastest developing country in Africa, which boasts itself for having effective formalising strategies in its entrepreneurial ecosystem, yet, barriers to exporting remain high as policy-making mechanisms remain largely dominated by western ideologies and western-borrowed structures. This deepens our understanding of institutional weaknesses and hybrids that remain embedded in many African policy-making mechanisms that need to be acknowledged a priori. In the last part of the chapter, we provide a critical analysis of existing methods using published research across the region, we then discuss the need to shift towards methodologies which are more context sensitive, recognising the postcolonial setting of Africa and allowing the ‘voice’ of entrepreneurs to emerge during fieldwork.