In light of recent enthusiasm over the African private sector, this paper reviews the business literature on African enterprise development with a view of identifying lacunas and formulating future research agendas. The paper starts out by proposing a framework for organizing the literature based on a distinction between contingency, strategy and performance. In terms of literature focusing on performance, the paper juxtaposes the traditional pessimistic view of African business performance with more recent, optimistic accounts. It is argued that while a growing number of studies suggest profound improvements in the performance of African enterprises, data limitations, conceptual ambiguities, and absence of comprehensive studies still cautions against sweeping generalizations regarding the performance of African enterprises. The paper proceeds to review the literature on factors shaping the performance of African enterprises. It is observed that while much research is focusing on the challenges and (more recently) opportunities of the African business environment, much less attention has been devoted to firm specific capabilities, strategies and management. The paper concludes by advocating a contingency approach to research on African enterprise development that emphasizes the interplay between firm strategy and the specificities of the African business environment.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.