The role and effectiveness of non-formal training programmes for entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is growing in popularity as a tool to combat the challenges of unemployment and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. A host of training programme offerings have emerged to mitigate the challenges of starting and sustaining a business in this context. Non-formal trainings (educational activities outside formal places of learning such as universities or schools) can help entrepreneurs develop essential business skills. A systematic literature review demonstrates how non-formal training programmes for entrepreneurship are evaluated across sub-Saharan Africa. We searched SCOPUS and EBSCO databases with the following keywords and their synonyms: ‘training’, ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘sub-Saharan Africa’. The final selection returned 49 articles that discuss non-formal training programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest significant variation in training types and their effectiveness. Beyond descriptive analytics, we show that a more nuanced understanding of the context-specific entrepreneurial environment needs to be considered when implementing and designing a programme and that this should be coupled with more rigorous effectiveness evaluations. We propose a deeper analysis of the role of human capital within the setting of local entrepreneurial ecosystems as well as the contextualization of training material and participant selection as a promising start to develop more effective training programmes for entrepreneurship.