Entrepreneurship education service and socio-economic development in sub-Saharan Africa

This chapter draws from two recent education projects in Africa to provide an analysis and implications of entrepreneurship education service provision as a peace-building effort, and a pathway to raising the human capital of hitherto excluded groups in a conflict environment. It highlights crucial lessons about the transformative impact of entrepreneurship education service provision, particularly in terms of facilitating positive transition from exclusion to socio-economic inclusion. The projects began in 2012 following the Nigerian government’s directive to all tertiary education institutions in the country to offer compulsory entrepreneurship courses to students regardless of their discipline. Although welcomed, entrepreneurship education implementation has had mixed success nationally, mainly because of inadequate human capacities, weak institutional arrangements including lack of the necessary pedagogies to facilitate its successful implementation across the board. However, the entrepreneurship education service project embarked upon by the University of Wolverhampton’s Centre for African Entrepreneurship and Leadership (CAEL) with a number of Nigerian Higher Education HE institutions demonstrates that entrepreneurship education, if implemented effectively, can deliver positive outcomes. Notwithstanding the success of the CAEL project, there continues to be lack of clarity in policy and support infrastructure for entrepreneurship education provision at the primary and the secondary schools’ levels in Nigeria, and indeed much of Africa. Thus, this chapter concludes with key implications for the provision of entrepreneurship education in primary and secondary level education in Africa.