Social Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Responding to calls for a better understanding of the relationship between social enterprises and their environments, this article focuses on contextual influences on social entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa. We identify four predominantly African contextual dimensions, i.e., acute poverty, informality, colonial history, and ethnic group identity, and explore their influence on the way social ventures perceive themselves and on their choice of activities. Our empirical study of 384 social enterprises from 19 subSaharan African countries suggests that ethnic group identity and high poverty levels influence both selfperception and activity choices, while the country's colonial history only influences self-perception and informality has no significant influence on either. These findings point to the need to consider both selfperception and the choice of activities in defining social entrepreneurship. Our study also highlights the importance of African contextual dimensions for understanding social entrepreneurship, and underlines the added value of incorporating insights from African data into management research more broadly.

Social Entrepreneurship in South Africa: Exploring the Influence of Environment

“…They conclude by calling "for further research on the role of the environment in social entrepreneurship … maybe on the basis of theoretical frameworks like contingency and new institutional theories" (pp.391). Finally, and as discussed earlier, Rivera Santos et al (2014) recently examined social entrepreneurship across Sub-Saharan Africa and its relationship with environmental characteristics, where they identify the need for "more fine grained analyses" (pp.21), of the kind conducted in this paper, at country and even community levels.…”

“…Whilst Kolk (2014) suggests that institutional voids should not be conceived as spaces 'empty' of institutions, but rather informal rules or arrangements may exist yet they may be insufficient to enable the overall proper functioning and development of markets. Kolk (2014) proposes the term institutional 'gaps' as an alternative to 'voids' reflecting the varying degrees to which institutions may be present or absent in such markets. These literatures again raise questions about the presence and absence of institutions and the types of gaps or voids that exist in the South African environment and the roles social enterprises play in filling these.…”

“…To date there has been limited consideration of how wider and ongoing debates about the definition and characteristics of social entrepreneurship, social enterprises and social entrepreneurs play out in African environments. These limitations are highlighted in a recent contribution by Rivera- Santos, Holt, Littlewood, & Kolk, (2014) which examines quantitatively social-entrepreneurship across Sub-Saharan Africa, finding evidence of the significance of African contextual dimensions for understanding social entrepreneurship in such settings. Their findings support incorporating the consideration of the environment into social entrepreneurship research to enrich our understanding of the phenomenon globally, whilst they also call for more in-depth research of the kind conducted in this paper examining the interplay between social entrepreneurship and the environment within and across African countries (Rivera- Santos et al, 2014).…”

“…Whilst there may also be insufficient profit-making potential or an absence of requisite functioning market institutions to encourage engagement with these issues by traditional businesses. It is in these 'institutional voids' (Mair, Martí & Ventresca, 2012) or 'gaps ' (Kolk, 2014) that South African social enterprises are often active.…”

Africa Business Research as a Laboratory for Theory-Building: Extreme Conditions, New Phenomena, and Alternative Paradigms of Social Relationships

“…The recent work on social entrepreneurship in Africa Rivera-Santos, Holt, Littlewood and Kolk, 2015) confirms the importance of this social dimension. Moreover, fieldwork in South Africa has uncovered several diverse types of organizations that can be categorized as social enterprises, challenging the more conventional idea that social enterprises combine social with profitability objectives (Battilana and Lee, 2014).…”