Enter the Market: African Entrepreneurial Rebirth After 1980

Abstract

Verhoef describes Africa’s turn to the market since the debt-ridden stasis of the 1980, as the dawn of democracy, political accountability and private enterprise. The causal relationship between market, responsible leadership, governance and entrepreneurial achievement is highlighted in the first exposition of entrepreneurial freedom and success in Africa since independence. Verhoef integrates biographies of business birth, growth and consolidation across Sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb and connects experiences with privatisation to the rise of large diversified conglomerates in Africa. Innovation and leadership are core to successful business development, and Verhoef connects these characteristics to the enduring family networks of early African business development when identifying leading businesses contributing to development in different sectors of African economies. The organisational form and management structures, except in South Africa, remain either relatively flat or owner-centralised.