Youth Entrepreneurship Support Interventions in Africa: The Role of the Family: A Critical Review

Abstract

Unemployment Poverty and Inequality (UPI) are some of the key challenges facing youths in Africa. In response to this, African countries have made several efforts to help deal with challenges facing the youths. These efforts include the promotion of youth entrepreneurship development using various strategies and policies with particular emphasis on improving the business environment so as to make it easier for youths to start and run their own businesses. Entrepreneurship has been recognised as one of the main strategies to overcome these challenges. As such, in recent years a growing awareness of the importance of youth entrepreneurship for economic development has triggered research on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship in developing countries. This realisation has given rise to a number of entrepreneurship support interventions with many stakeholders coming on board to ensure that entrepreneurship succeeds. This paper explains the role of the family in youth entrepreneurship development in Africa. It explains how the family influences the development of youth entrepreneurship on the continent of Africa. The paper has found that although there were several efforts to improve youth entrepreneurship development on the continent, many approaches ignore the family as primary institution and as a key stakeholder in youth entrepreneurship. The review has also revealed that although the family remains ignored, there are opportunities that are found within the family that can help to steer youth entrepreneurship forward. This paper recommends that entrepreneurship support interventions should not just focus on the youths, but on family as well.

Keywords

• youth
• family
• entrepreneurship development
• stakeholders
• Africa