Year
2015

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"In March 2015, the ANDE South Africa chapter brought together just over 30 participants involved in the education entrepreneurship ecosystem including public and private funders, capacity development providers, academics and edupreneurs for a full-day roundtable discussion in Johannesburg to flesh out challenges and opportunities faced by edupreneurs in South Africa and to come up with collaborative actions to strengthen the ecosystem. The discussion, which covered five topics from Access to Finance to Infrastructure and Enabling Technologies, focused on direct instruction models (predominantly Low Fee Private Schools) and EdTech entrepreneurs."

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"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."

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"This report addresses the question: 'How do support programmes fulfil different roles for startups within startup ecosystems?' To put it another way, terms used for programmes supporting startups include: accelerators, coworking spaces, incubators, active seed investors, courses, competitions. But what is the difference?
In trying to answer this, this study interviewed over 30 practitioners, and undertook site visits to startup programmes operating in cities in high-income countries in Europe (Berlin, London, Munich, Cambridge), with the addition of Israel as a close neighbour."

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"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."

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"The purpose of this report is to provide delegates to the 104th Session of the International Labour Conference with up-to-date evidence on the relevance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for employment, the key constraints faced by SMEs and their workers, and the effectiveness of measures to support this enterprise segment. The report ultimately attempts to provide answers to crucial questions such as whether SMEs are living up to their promise of being a major contributor to job creation, whether these jobs are of adequate quality, and how effective the various policies for promoting SMEs are."

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"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."

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"This report provides a framework, examples, and reflections on lessons learned from Acumen's various partnerships and collaboration efforts. It aims to catalyse discussion and collaborative action that accelerates growth with impact."

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"This report highlights the potential of small, micro and medium enterprises (SMME) in the process of moving towards a green economy in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It also describes challenges that SMME with inclusive business models face and provides policy recommendations on how to support them."

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"This publication is intended to raise awareness of the impact of social enterprise supply chains on society and the benefits for companies that do business with them in Peru. These pages contain many examples of companies that work with social enterprises to meet their corporate and social responsibility objectives, as well as a directory of Peruvian social enterprises that are potential suppliers for major businesses around the country. With this guide we hope to inspire the representatives of Peruvian companies and give them the courage to explore new business models that meet their operational needs while generating a positive and lasting social and environmental impact."

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"Despite regulatory efforts designed to make it easier for firms to formalize, informality remains extremely high among firms in Sub-Saharan Africa. In most of the region, business registration in a national registry is separate from tax registration. This paper provides initial results from an experiment in Malawi that randomly allocated firms into a control group and three treatment groups: a) a group offered assistance for costless business registration; b) a group offered assistance with costless business registration and (separate) tax registration; and c) a group offered assistance for costless business registration along with an information session at a bank that ended with the offer of business bank accounts. The study finds that all three treatments had extremely large impacts on business registration, with 75 percent of those offered assistance receiving a business registration certificate. The findings offer a cost-effective way of getting firms to formalize in this dimension. However, in common with other studies, information and assistance has a limited impact on tax registration. The paper measures the short-term impacts of formalization on financial access and usage. Business registration alone has no impact for either men or women on bank account usage, savings, or credit. However, the combination of formalization assistance and the bank information session results in significant impacts on having a business bank account, financial practices, savings, and use of complementary financial products."

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