Entrepreneurial opportunities and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa: A review & agenda for the future

Abstract

Entrepreneurship, with its focus on opportunities, is often seen as one of the cornerstones of poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, evidence for the positive impact of entrepreneurship programs on poverty is mixed and now widely debated. Therefore, scholars have called for a better theoretical understanding of opportunities in SSA in the face of severe resource constraints that characterize the region. In this paper, we aim to shed further light on this issue and outline an agenda for future research. To this end, we first review the current literature on opportunities (discovered and created) and poverty (income-based and capabilities-based). We next employ four case examples of poor entrepreneurs in SSA that challenge assumptions from Western entrepreneurship theories and illustrate what could be fruitful avenues for future research on entrepreneurial opportunities and poverty in SSA.