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Within developing countries, particularly in Africa, there is an emerging literature which highlights the unique obstacles faced by women entrepreneurs who start and develop their own businesses (De Vita, Mari, & Poggesi, 2014; Jamali, 2009; Minniti & Naude, 2010; Naude & Havenga, 2005; Nziku & Struthers, 2018). A key objective of this chapter is to critically appraise some of the conceptual approaches adopted in this literature. In so doing, the authors revisit a seminal paper first developed by Granovetter (1973) which suggested that female entrepreneurs, instead of being disadvantaged by the so-called ‘weak ties’ that bind their business networks, actually enjoy compensating benefits which Granovetter referred to as the strength of weak ties (SWT). Building on the conceptual work of Nziku and Struthers (2018) which developed an innovative taxonomy for analysing the SWT concept within a Principal-Agent (P-A) paradigm, the chapter will set out new insights which challenge some of the assumptions of the extant entrepreneurship literature. In particular, that women are inherently more risk averse in their business decision making than men. The theoretical context for this will be derived from a behavioural economics methodology first developed by Kahneman and Tversky (1979). They introduced the concept of loss aversion as a more realistic approach to attitudes towards risk on the part of entrepreneurs than risk aversion. The chapter contends that the loss aversion perspective may be more appropriate to the decision-making frame adopted by female entrepreneurs, especially in the context of Africa as well as in other developing regions of the world. The chapter will therefore suggest that such an approach can yield fresh insights on the topic of female entrepreneurship which the extant literature heretofore has not addressed, though this will have to be subsequently tested empirically.

Rural farm and non-farm based entrepreneurial activities within Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) play significant roles in job creation as well as food security for the majority of rural dwelling citizens (UNCTAD, 2018). This chapter examines the policies and strategies for supporting both farm and non-farm entrepreneurial activities within rural communities in SSA. In order to achieve this, the authors have completed a systematic literature review of both conceptual and empirical work on the role of policies and strategies for rural entrepreneurship in selected SSA, namely Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and the United Republic of Tanzania (URT). This was completed alongside an assessment of the constraints and potential opportunities in order to stimulate linkages between rural entrepreneurship and structural economic transformation including the potential roles of both farm and non-farm based entrepreneurial activities. Key linkages between rural farm and non-farm based entrepreneurial activities are emphasised The chapter also highlights mechanisms through which governments and private sectors can work together for the maximisation of available opportunities and best practices that rural entrepreneurship can offer for job creation among rural communities in SSA.

Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (RoSCAs) are informal lending groups widely found in many developing countries around the globe. This chapter studies the interest-free RoSCAs in Egypt and how it compares to other RoSCAs in Africa. The chapter also examines the possible motives for RoSCA participation employing a primary dataset collected from Cairo, the Egyptian capital. The motives studied include access (or lack thereof) to the formal banking sector, religiosity, self-control, and social preferences. Trust and trustworthiness among RoSCA participants are also studied. The chapter shows that RoSCA participation is very popular among the sample respondents regardless of income levels, access to formal banking and religious views. RoSCAs, however, are shown to play an important role as a commitment device for savings and investment, including human capital accumulation when the self-control level is moderate or low. Social preferences and trust levels, on the other hand, are not found to be significantly different for RoSCA and non-RoSCA participants.

This chapter uses discourse analysis to explain why entrepreneurship has become a primary response to Africa’s youth employment challenge. It analyses almost 20 years of academic literature and publications from one of the world’s foremost authorities on entrepreneurship: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). The study found that youth were positioned within a discourse of entrepreneurial essentialism; where entrepreneurship was narrativised as the only option for youth employment; and youth were framed as entrepreneurship being the natural solution for them. Youth were concurrently framed within numerous contradictory entrepreneurial discourses which were used to elevate and legitimise entrepreneurship as the key pathway for addressing Africa’s youth employment challenge. An important finding in this study was that the dominant model of entrepreneurship being promoted by GEM to address the challenge is a mainly skills-based pathway to self-employment and low-growth microenterprise development. This is concerning for two reasons: firstly, global evidence does not demonstrate much support for such an approach, and secondly, it undermines other responses to youth unemployment, particularly those which seek to address more structural, demand-side barriers to employment.

The debate that entrepreneurship is an engine of economic development has been a long-standing one. The higher the level of entrepreneurial activities, the higher the economic development. However, this literature is contradictory or elusive in Sub-Saharan Africa. Entrepreneurial activities are high in Africa, but economic development is not. Using Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM, 2017) data, the chapter discusses some of the contradictory factors. Further data were collected from 60 businesses, 20 each from Cameroon, Nigeria and Uganda for more clarification in 2019. The results show that the economic development is solely measured in economic terms. Entrepreneurship in Africa operates in an embedded context quite different from that of developed nations. Africans are often only making do with the environment in which they find themselves; thus, entrepreneurship in Africa should not be seen as unproductive considering the context and motives of the entrepreneurs.

Women entrepreneurs face a myriad of challenges in running their enterprises, such as inadequate market information for their products or services, lack of marketing skills, insufficient capital to start and run the business and unfavourable policies in county governments among others, leading to unwillingness to participate in businesses. To overcome these challenges, a number of initiatives had been put in place as a way of empowering these women, for example, Women Enterprise and Development Fund (WEDF) aimed at financing and sustenance of women-owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Despite these initiatives, women continue to lag behind in terms of entrepreneurship leading to this study to unearth underlying issues pertaining to women entrepreneurship and empowerment. The study was guided by the following objectives: to determine the effects of WEDF loans on women empowerment, to evaluate accessibility of credit by women entrepreneurs, to establish the role of capacity building on the performance of women enterprises and to establish the effects of women enterprises on household livelihoods. This study is significant as it aimed at establishing the relationship between gender enterprise in relation to women empowerment by use of descriptive and explanatory research designs. The study targeted 246 women entrepreneurs in Eldoret whereby 51 respondents were sampled randomly who were issued with questionnaires having closed- and open-ended questions. Secondary data obtained from the banks were also used to enhance the accuracy of the data. The study established that WEDF loans had a positive effect on women empowerment and an improved household livelihood. On accessibility of loans, a few entrepreneurs had benefitted as women were required to be in groups in order to benefit and in addition, have collaterals. Performance of business enterprises owned by women who possessed marketing skills was good as opposed to those without the skills necessitating capacity building. The study therefore recommends that there is a need to encourage vulnerable groups to participate in economic development and women entrepreneurs to form groups which will enable them do table banking hence making them financially empowered.

This study uses a descriptive casual design and survey random sampling from 115 observations from five-star, four-star and three-star hotels due to the fact that they provide employee staff feeding or complimentary service. The Pearson correlation and multiple regression were used to test the direct and mediating effects for linear relationships between income tax and financial performance. Tax on adjusted net income has a significant effect on net income and non-significant effect on return on asset (ROA). This means that the level of income tax paid by the hotels after reintegration of non-deductible charges including complimentary staff feeding and other allowances reduced their assets and turnover in general thus slowing reinvestment. The findings reveal that firm liquidity had a significant effect on ROA. This indicates that the income tax pay-out decreases hotels’ cash flow resulting on loan diversification leverage. Shareholders are therefore forgoing their shares for reinvestment in different businesses other than hotels. The findings also reveal a significant effect of firms’ age on income tax on hotels’ financial performance. Simply paying income taxes is not lowered by the hotels’ age thus endorsing the concept of paying tax when income is available and vice versa when there is no income. Since Rwanda promotes investment and doing business for the private sector, the tax base increases the tax collection amount instead of collecting a small amount on a few number of tax paying hotels. This commends the tax administration review and frequently harmonised the tax procedures to hospitality sector and is the key development of their financial performance, which had been used by the hotels of the developed countries like the USA and Europe. This will improve Rwanda’s competitiveness in hotel induction and sustain hospitality business investment with tax base for government. It was pragmatic that hotels may directly deduct all related expenses before income tax calculation while others assimilate them into other similar expenditures. There is no formal way for accounting these hotel expenses, whereas the category of staffs benefitting are mainly junior staffs who, in turn, are low-wage holders. This does not leave space for hotel owners to take out incentives therefore leaving out hotels’ darkness in their earnings returns and staff welfare. This chapter presented the directorial policy, philosophy and practices in tourism or hospitality (hotel) sector in Africa. It has become relevant for harmonisation of financial performance while including all life cycle practices of hotels like staff feeding or complimentary service. This chapter is classified as an empirical study.