Chances and challenges of African entrepreneurial activity in times of crisis

ABSTRACT

This special issue looks in new ways at the relationship between small-scale entrepreneurship, economic (and political) crisis, and the outcomes of neoliberal market economy in African countries. In other words, it studies entrepreneurial activities particularly of young people in crisis situations in contemporary African economic contexts through close-to-the-ground ethnography and an anthropological perspective. The contributions examine from the vantage point of the specific circumstances in their country – Rwanda, Kenya, Cameroon/South Africa, Southern Algeria, Burkina Faso, Nigeria – how young people work on their futures as entrepreneurial agents navigating between local settings, governmental regulations and (global) market relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Crisis
• entrepreneurship
• trade
• business
• youth
• Africa

Acknowledgments

Some of the contributions to this special issue have been presented in a panel that Julia Binter and Ute Röschenthaler organized at the biannual conference of the German Anthropological Association in Marburg in 2015 during which crisis was the focus of debate. More contributors joined the special issue project later. Heartfelt thanks are due to nine reviewers for their excellent comments that helped to make the articles publishable and to Janine Murphy for her invaluable help in copyediting. I am also grateful to the Centre of Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF) at Goethe University Frankfurt for its financial support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ute Röschenthaler

Ute Röschenthaler is a professor of Anthropology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, and a member of the project ‘Africa’s Asian Options’ (AFRASO) at the Goethe University Frankfurt. She published on cultural mobility, trade networks, intellectual property rights, and entrepreneurship in Africa. Her recent books include Mobility between Africa, Asia, and Latin America: Economic Networks and Cultural Interactions (ed. with Alessandro Jedlowski; Zed Books, 2017); Copyright Africa: How Intellectual Property, Media and Markets Transform Immaterial Cultural Goods (ed. with Mamadou Diawara; Sean Kingston Publishing, 2016); and Cultural Entrepreneurship in Africa (ed. with Dorothea Schulz; Routledge, 2016).