Entrepreneurship in Africa

Description

A tapestry of innovation, ideas, and commerce, Africa and its entrepreneurial hubs are deeply connected to those of the past. Moses E. Ochonu and an international group of contributors explores the lived experiences of African innovators who have created value for themselves and their communities. Profiles of vendors, farmers, craftspeople, healers, spiritual consultants, warriors, musicians, technological innovators, political mobilizers, and laborers featured in this volume show African models of entrepreneurship in action. As a whole, the essays consider the history of entrepreneurship in Africa, illustrating its multiple origins and showing how it differs from the Western capitalist experience. As they establish historical patterns of business creativity, these explorations open new avenues for understanding indigenous enterprise and homegrown commerce and their relationship to social, economic, and political debates in Africa today.

Introduction: Toward African Entrepreneurship and Business History / Moses E. Ochonu

Part One: Mercantile and Artisanal Networks
1. Globalization and the Making of East Africa's Asian Entrepreneurship Networks / Chambi Chachage
2. The Wangara Factor in West African Business History / Moses E. Ochonu

Part Two: Female Entrepreneurs and Gendered Innovation
3. Women Entrepreneurs, Gender, Traditions, and the Negotiation of Power Relations in Colonial Nigeria / Gloria Chuku
4. From Artisanal Brew to a Booming Industry: An Economic History of Pito Brewing among Northern Ghanaian Migrant Women in Southern Ghana / Isidore Lobnibe
5. Interconnections between Female Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation in the Nigerian Context / Gloria Emeagwali

Part Three: Entrepreneurship as Political Initiative
6. Benin Imperialism and Entrepreneurship in North East Yorubaland From the Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Century / Uyilawa Usuanlele
7. Taking Control: Sonatrach and the Algerian Decolonization Process / Marta Musso

Part Four: Unconventional Entrepreneurs
8. Business After Hours: The Entrepreneurial Ventures of Nigerian Working Class Seamen / Lynn Schler
9. Ace Boxing Promoter: "Super Human Power," Boxing, and Sports Entrepreneurship in Colonial Nigeria, 1945–1960 / Michael Gennaro
10. Healing Works: Nana Kofi Donk and the Business of Indigenous Therapeutics / Kwasi Konadu
11. Entrepreneurs or Wage Laborers? The Elusive Homo Economicus / Ralph Callebert

Part Five: African Enterprise in the Shadow of Colonization
12. The Socioeconomic Bases of Growth of Microentrepreneurship in the Igede Area of Central Nigeria in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries / Mike Odey
13. Ethnicity, Colonial Expediency, and the Development of Retail Business in Colonial Turkana, Northwestern Kenya, 1920–1950 / Martin Shanguhyia

Epilogue: African Entrepreneurship, Past and Present / Moses E. Ochonu

Sujets

• Economics
• African studies
• Entrepreneurship
• entrepreneur

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 05 février 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253032621
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN AFRICA
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN AFRICA
A Historical Approach
Edited by Moses E. Ochonu
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
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1320 East 10th Street
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iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ochonu, Moses E., editor.
Title: Entrepreneurship in Africa : a historical approach / edited by Moses E. Ochonu.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017053534 (print) | LCCN 2017051094 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253032621 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253032607 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253034380 (pbk : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Entrepreneurship-Africa-History. | New business Enterprises-Africa-History.
Classification: LCC HD2346.A55 (print) | LCC HD2346.A55 E583 2018 (ebook) | DDC 338.642096-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053534
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Toward African Entrepreneurship and Business History
Moses E. Ochonu
Part I. Mercantile and Artisanal Networks
1 Globalization and the Making of East Africa s Asian Entrepreneurship Networks
Chambi Chachage
2 The Wangara Factor in West African Business History
Moses E. Ochonu
Part II. Female Entrepreneurs and Gendered Innovation
3 Women Entrepreneurs, Gender, Traditions, and the Negotiation of Power Relations in Colonial Nigeria
Gloria Chuku
4 From Artisanal Brew to a Booming Industry: An Economic History of Pito Brewing among Northern Ghanaian Migrant Women in Southern Ghana
Isidore Lobnibe
5 Interconnections between Female Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation in the Nigerian Context
Gloria Emeagwali
Part III. Entrepreneurship as Political Initiative
6 Benin Imperialism and Entrepreneurship in Northeast Yorubaland from the Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century
Uyilawa Usuanlele
7 Taking Control: Sonatrach and the Algerian Decolonization Process
Marta Musso
Part IV. Unconventional Entrepreneurs
8 Business after Hours: The Entrepreneurial Ventures of Nigerian Working-Class Seamen
Lynn Schler
9 Ace Boxing Promoter: Super Human Power, Boxing, and Sports Entrepreneurship in Colonial Nigeria, 1945-1960
Michael J. Gennaro
10 Healing Works: Nana Kofi D nk and the Business of Indigenous Therapeutics
Kwasi Konadu
11 Entrepreneurs or Wage Laborers? The Elusive Homo Economicus
Ralph Callebert
Part V. African Enterprise in the Shadow of Colonization
12 The Socioeconomic Bases of the Growth of Microentrepreneurship in the Igede Area of Central Nigeria in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Mike Odugbo Odey
13 Ethnicity, Colonial Expediency, and the Development of Retail Business in Colonial Turkana, Northwestern Kenya, 1920-1950
Martin S. Shanguhyia
Epilogue: African Entrepreneurship, Past and Present
Moses E. Ochonu
Index
Acknowledgments
I N THE COURSE of putting this collection together, I incurred much debt with colleagues and friends in and outside the academy. This volume would have been impossible to produce without the support and cooperation of my fellow authors. They responded enthusiastically to a call for papers and followed this up with encouraging words, timely submission of their chapters, and prompt responses to inquiries.
The foundational conversations that planted the seed of this book in me began several years ago and with several people. As director of the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), Dr. Wiebe Boer generously invited me to partake, along with other scholars, in a research project designed to map the contemporary African investment and transnational entrepreneurial landscape.
This project led to my participation in another important conversation: a scholars retreat in Calabar, Nigeria, organized by the foundation s Africapitalism Institute. The retreat was designed to formulate the outlines of an African business ethic under the rubric of Africapitalism. There, in the company of other scholars, I reflected harder on the nature of entrepreneurship in Africa, its character, history, and peculiarities. Subsequent reflections produced a mental outline for this book. I am grateful to TEF and to Dr. Boer for opening these avenues that enabled me to imagine the contours of this volume.
My conversation with Professor Kenneth Amaeshi of the University of Edinburgh Business School, a renowned scholar of African business and entrepreneurial cultures, reaffirmed my epistemological convictions on the topic of this volume.
Dr. Lucky Onmonya, the registrar and CEO of Nigeria s Institute for Development Finance and Project Management, Abuja, is one of Africa s authoritative voices on matters of entrepreneurial empowerment. Over the years, our conversations on the broad theme of African entrepreneurial potentials have enriched my perspectives and given me new ways of thinking about the subject outside my strict academic and disciplinary training.
At different stages of this book project, Scott Jossart helped with a variety of duties ranging from editing, to formatting, to coordination. His input was instrumental in resolving several technical challenges that arose as the volume gradually materialized.
I thank the reviewers, who not only thoroughly read the manuscript but also provided us with specific, actionable comments that, as they will see, have helped strengthen several aspects of the book.
Finally, I thank my wife, Margaret, and our two daughters, Ene and Agbenu, who persevered and supported me as I labored to get this collection ready for publication.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN AFRICA
Introduction
Toward African Entrepreneurship and Business History
Moses E. Ochonu
A FRICA IS SUFFUSED in entrepreneurship talk. Local and international development and antipoverty programs privilege entrepreneurship and recommend it as a bulwark against economic adversity and as a foundation for economic recovery. The figure of the entrepreneur has emerged as an organizing idiom for articulating the economic hopes and aspirations of various African societies. Globally recognized African entrepreneurs such as Aliko Dangote, Strive Masiyiwa, Patrice Motsepe, and Tony Elumelu are collectively regarded as the vanguard of a new African economic and developmental order that depends on the continuing ingenuity of entrepreneurs. These leading African entrepreneurs may indeed occupy the cutting edge of a new African economic age animated by entrepreneurial energies, but it is important to recognize that Dangote and his cohort stand on the unheralded shoulders of generations of African entrepreneurs, a tapestry of business histories and experiences that go back to precolonial and colonial times.
While Forbes-listed African entrepreneurs continue to capture the continent s imagination, Africa s rich entrepreneurial tradition calls for reflections on the role of innovation and enterprise in African history, as well as for a recovery of the multiple stories of entrepreneurial endeavor that foreshadowed today s entrepreneurial practices on the continent. This volume is a modest attempt to begin this task of recovery. Implicit in this effort is a historicization of Africa s intensifying fetishization of entrepreneurship as a path to individual, group, and societal economic prosperity. The facts of this entrepreneurship history, this volume demonstrates, should temper the entrepreneurial hysteria that has gripped Africa, but they also should foreground and lend credibility to ongoing conversations about the existence and contemporary utility of a distinct African business culture.
We live in a neoliberal moment in which entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs are celebrated as economic agents, catalysts for poverty reduction and economic growth. Whether entrepreneurship deserves this outsize reputation in our vast economic ecosystem or is itself a function of fundamental structural economic reconfigurations is an enduring question, one debated but never resolved. What can historical modes of analysis and a backward gaze into the longue dur e reveal about what entrepreneurs can and cannot do? How can we engage with this question of entrepreneurial instrumentality from the unique perspective of African history? The latter question is the central focus of this volume.
Long monopolized by economics and its allied disciplines, entrepreneurship has morphed into a transdisciplinary subject of inquiry, with several humanistic and social scientific fields scrambling to contribute to our understanding of the role of entrepreneurial innovation and entrepreneurs in economic development. Historians have been slow to bring their methodological and analytical protocols to bear on the subject, and Africanist historians have been slower still to grapple with a subject matter for which Africa has increasingly become a laboratory.
This volume corrects t