Are African economies open for entrepreneurship: how do we know?

Inspired by the concept of entrepreneurship as a fundamental human right, this chapter interrogates the readiness of African states for entrepreneurial activity open to all. Given the scale of economic, demographic, political and environmental challenges facing African countries, exacerbated by the Coronavirus pandemic, it asks if the scale of ambition needs to be raised to support universal access to enterprise and innovation across Africa. From a shortlist of eight internationally recognised indices, five were selected to develop a framework for assessing the openness of African states for entrepreneurship. The most recent datasets from these five indices were standardised into a set of 54 African states. The countries were ranked by mean scores to enable pan-African comparisons. The chapter contributes to existing knowledge of African entrepreneurship and development through the development of a composite pan-African framework which maps national levels of economic openness and related factors critically affecting entrepreneurial development. This is more useful than global indices which typically conflate similarities and differences between African states, whilst masking historic causes, such as colonial legacies and instances of poor governance, conflict or recovery from natural disasters.