Exploring the desire to be an entrepreneur among university-educated youths: lessons from Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT

The developing country entrepreneur is championed as a driver of economic growth, poverty alleviation, and social development. Yet little is known about what drives entrepreneurial ambitions in developing countries. This study uses qualitative data from focus group discussions with university-educated Sierra Leonean youths to explore these issues. Findings show that very few have entrepreneurial ambitions ex ante, though a large share resort to entrepreneurship as a survival mechanism. Limited entrepreneurial ambitions can be explained by macro-level factors such as access to credit, but are largely driven by individual-level factors such as conceptions of success and cultural perceptions about entrepreneurship.

KEYWORDS:

• Labour and livelihoods
• Developmental policies
• Youth
• Region: Sub-Saharan Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Data based on estimates from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators: https://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators

2 Sierra Leone was not part of the sample of countries.

3 High levels of necessity-driven entrepreneurship have also been reported in other African countries such as Angola, Burkina Faso, and Togo (Bosma et al. 2021, 40).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by International Growth Centre: [Grant Number 39408].

Notes on contributors

Jamelia Harris

Jamelia Harris is a Research Economist at Fiscus Ltd and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. She holds a DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford.