Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for the Africa we want

Many regions and countries aim to copy a Silicon Valley model of entrepreneurship-led
development. We argue that this is misguided, in general, and in low income economies
even more. We advocate an alternative approach that can be adapted to local context, with
respect to both conditions and outcomes. We focus on a context with low incomes and
massive population growth, with large cohorts of youngsters entering the economy: Africa.
In this context there is a huge need for well-functioning entrepreneurial ecosystems to
enable private sector development and more fundamentally to have the talents of a large
new generation flourish and to tackle gigantic sustainable development challenges. We
argue that for the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach to be useful for African economies it
needs to be meaningful for the stakeholders involved, and that this can be achieved with
locally-embedded narratives about the future of entrepreneurship in Africa. We analyze
entrepreneurial ecosystem narratives that inform theory and policy practice of
entrepreneurship-led development in Africa. Our argument is that for Africa, and other low
income economy contexts as well, we need to embrace entrepreneurial ecosystem
narratives that suit the local context and envisioned futures of the local stakeholders