A Review of and Future Research Agenda on Women Entrepreneurship in Africa

Purpose: This paper seeks to systematically review and synthesise existing research knowledge on African women entrepreneurship to identify gaps for future studies.

Methodology/research design/approach: The paper conducted a systematic literature review of published studies from 1990-2020 on women entrepreneurship in Africa using a 5M gender aware framework of Brush, de Bruin and Welter (2009).

Findings: The systematic literature review of published studies found the fragmentation, descriptive and prescriptive orientation of studies on Africa women entrepreneurship and devoid of theoretical focus. Further, women entrepreneurship studies tended to be underpinned from various disciplines, less from the entrepreneurship lens, mostly quantitative, and at its infancy stage of development. With a primary focus on development, enterprise performance, and livelihood, studies rarely attended to issues of motherhood and the nuanced understanding of women entrepreneurship’s embeddedness in family and institutional contexts of Africa.

Originality: The paper contributes to a holistic understanding of women entrepreneurship in Africa by using a 5M framework to review the research knowledge. In addition, the paper not only identifies unexplored/ or less examined issues but also questions the taken-for-granted assumptions of existing knowledge and suggest adoption of context- and gender-sensitive theories and methods.

Research limitations/implications: The paper questions the view that women entrepreneurship is a ‘panacea’ and unravels how family context, customary practices, poverty and, rural-urban and formal/informal divide, significantly shape and interact with African women entrepreneurs’ enterprising experience and firm performance.