The impact of entrepreneurship on economic growth : empirical evidence from selected African countries

Abstract EN

This paper aims to investigate whether entrepreneurship is of any relevance to Africa's economic growth processes.

Using the Arrelano-Bond GMM-SYS technique and balanced panel data for 13 African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, South Africa, Zambia, Senegal, Rwanda, Nigeria, Botswana, Mauritius, Namibia, and Lesotho) over the period (2006-2017).

The analysis shows that economic growth is positively influenced by the rate of new firm's creation; however, it is still inefficient to create a significant number of jobs for the continent's booming population.

We turn these results to many discussed factors in our analysis, such as the lack of adequate business environment, skills and training programs gap, infrastructure fragility, demographics, and culture.

Therefore policymakers must consider these results when designing economic policies.