Business in Independent Africa

Abstract

Entrepreneurial resilience in spite of the state. Verhoef outlines business activity during the post-independence period in Africa as having to negotiate new market distortion in the form of authoritarian regimes, where political favouritism and different forms of discrimination characterised newly independent states. Formerly, unknown cases of business resilience under conditions of socialist macro-economic policies and a dominant position for state-owned enterprises in the leading economic sectors of the new states are discussed, whereby the state-business relationship since the 1960s emerges. Verhoef describes the Botswana exception as a case of business-state inclusivity, as opposed to statutory ethnic marginalisation and nationalisation that destroyed opportunity and undermined growth in independent states. Verhoef illustrates the inhibiting impact of state power on the development of small entrepreneurs and managerial capabilities in the private sector, as SOE management failed the states.