"This research is unique as it is one of few studies that looks at women entrepreneurs from a regional perspective, to assess similarities and differences in how women entrepreneurs are coping with financial and non-financial barriers to growth in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda respectively. The study also establishes how these women currently fund their businesses, explores attitudes to different types of financing to expand their enterprises and reveals the funding gaps and capacity building needs."

"In this guide, we endorse management and governance systems as a key ingredient for a successful and stable business. We encourage SMEs to establish appropriate systems and to avoid the common 'one-man show' approach among them. We show them the relative ease of achieving such a positive development just by making a few changes in how they manage their businesses. To help them, we present best practices and benefits of proper management and governance systems, along with business case studies about their fellow SMEs that have successfully applied them."

"Recent field experiments demonstrate that advice, mentorship, and feedback from randomly assigned peers improve entrepreneurial performance. These results raise a natural question: what is preventing entrepreneurs and managers from forming these peer connections themselves? We argue that entrepreneurs may be under-networked because they lack the necessary social skills- the ability to communicate effectively and interact collaboratively with new acquaintances-that allow them to match efficiently with knowledgeable peers. We use a field experiment in the context of a business training program to test if a short social skills training module improves who the participants choose to learn from within the program. We find that entrepreneurs who were exposed to the social skills training formed 50% more relationships with peers. These relationships exhibited more matching based on managerial skill and were more ethnically diverse. Finally, the training also substantially increased entrepreneurs' business performance. Our findings suggest that social skills help entrepreneurs build relationships that create value for both themselves and their peers."

"A survey of the support available for entrepreneurs in South Africa was undertaken by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), South Africa. The Infographic highlights the key findings while interactive buttons provide a more detailed overview of the support available."

"The promotion of micro and small enterprises has been a centerpiece of the Ethiopian government's strategy to alleviate urban unemployment among the youth since 2004. Since this time, the government has adopted twin strategies of creating a business environment conducive to start and operate MSEs while at the same time actively triggering the establishment of new MSEs.

In this research, using a large dataset collected from 13 major cities in Ethiopia, we explore whether government-induced enterprises (cooperatives) differ from self-initiated enterprises (non-cooperatives) in various aspects of business productivity, business practices and performance."

"This guide concerns smallholder farmers and their engagement with markets in Africa. It looks at their degree of engagement as well as the possibilities to link them to formal firms in ways that may improve access to capital, inputs, know-how and markets. It adopts three perspectives to frame thinking about key issues: agricultural development policy, rural market failures and a 'business view', the latter with regards to high start-up costs and learning thresholds."

"The Shell Foundation commissioned Enclude and the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) to conduct research on how to spur significant scaling up of investment in and reach to SMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa over the coming three to five years. This study is based on research conducted from late 2016 to mid-2017, with generous participation from leading providers of SME finance globally through roundtable discussions, surveys and interviews. The findings in this report highlight both individual approaches and systemic interventions necessary to achieve significant scale."

"This paper seeks to outline the social enterprise landscape in Ghana. It reviews the enabling environment and the scope of capacity-building activities supporting social enterprise to provide an overview of the profile of existing social enterprises and social innovation activity. It presents information on perceptions and levels of awareness of social enterprise, the obstacles and challenges faced and opportunities to improve the enabling environment; and lessons from social enterprise activities in other national contexts. It should be noted that the study is not, and did not set out to be a comprehensive review of all social enterprises and support organisation in Ghana."

"This paper synthesises findings, based on case studies of social enterprises operating in the agriculture and health sectors in Kenya and Vietnam. Main conclusions are that the concept of social enterprise needs to be clearly defined if governments and donors want to give preferential support to such organisations and that defining social enterprise as a hybrid business model facilitates identification and analysis of enterprise models that are distinct from mainstream business. The research found that the social enterprises covered in the survey were often small, personality driven, and internationally supported. Social enterprises face special constraints linked to their hybrid business model: access to finance, human resources, legal status, difficult markets, and management weakness. Market and state failure creates niches for social enterprise: serving disadvantaged communities, managing public infrastructure, and creating environmental benefits. Governments, donors and promoters should assess the niche for social enterprise in specific market contexts in place of blanket promotion of the concept."

"This study estimates that social enterprises could create more than 1 million additional jobs by 2030 in the 12 focus countries that have been analyzed. Overall, this would result in a total of approximately 5.5 million direct jobs in social enterprises in 2030. These jobs would be created in existing markets, but also for new markets, thus creating new value chains and many more indirect income opportunities in these countries. The implementation of the interventions recommended in this report are thus an important action to prepare the African continent on future demographic dynamics. In addition, they can also be seen as an important contribution to preserve jobs that have been put at risk because of COVID-19."