Women’s Enterprising in Africa: A Systematic Literature Review

This chapter evaluates the state of research knowledge on women’s enterprising in Africa by conducting a systematic literature review of 104 studies published between 2000-2020. The chapter provides important insights into the context in which African women entrepreneurs operate; their motivations, orientations, and competence to venture into business. The chapter further provides insights into the enabling and/or constraining roles of the embeddedness of African women entrepreneurs in multiple contexts (i.e., economic, cultural, family, social and legal). We found that many studies lack qualitative exploration of women’s enterprising and instead sought to identify factors such as traits, characteristics, access to various resources, etc., that account for gender gap in enterprising and firm performance. The chapter argues that better understanding of women’s enterprising in Africa can only be achieved by theories and methods which consider the multiple embeddedness of women’s enterprising in their contexts.