Enterprise In Action

The village Market by Angu Walters

Africa is the capital of enterprise. Visit any African village, city or town, you see more traders than anywhere else. Per capita, Africa leads in entrepreneurship. Africa has more self-employed citizens than found in western nations.

Entrepreneurship is plentiful, however they is little heavy industry and mass production. Africa's  neocolonial legacy has played a part in its industrial lack. Business education in Africa is highly westernized. Academic studies, in business, are made for established corporate entities, not the challenges of African self-employment.

Africa has the entrepreneurial drive. Power cuts, difficult roads, corruption, paltry finances, water shortages, do not stop enterprise. They do however cause serious problems and increase costs. Also, they evidence technological and infrastructural limitations-a long term problem. Biased corporate studies do not support self-employed enterprise. They do not give one the competency needed to overcome Africa's peculiar challenges.

Lessons in enterprise propagate the Main Actor fallacy. Hollywood sells the mythical one hero savior. Schumpeter, the father of modern studies in entrepreneurship, sells the idea of the hero entrepreneur. To realize industrialization, Chang states: individual entrepreneurship has to be channeled into collective productive enterprise.

Collective enterprise benefits from capacity and scale. Africa has a lot of individual entrepreneurs. Institutional advances can channel the efforts of smart enterprising individuals into entrepreneurial collectives. Pooling ideas, capital and skills will create corporate entities. Team work is the way forward for Africa's entrepreneurs. Building organisations will develop skills that will form the foundation of future productive institutions.