Sam Kamuriwo & Sara Jones 
Developing University Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa [EPUB ebook] 

What is the status of university entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA)? How could they be strengthened so that students, academic staff and relevant stakeholders that are part of the ecosystems can best produce better quality ventures — i.e. that can employ more people or make venture founders more employable?

This book provides a current review of the state of teaching entrepreneurship and its impact on SSA and illuminates different ways universities are strengthening their university entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems. Different approaches in the book fall into four thematic sections namely: 1) the exploitation of digital infrastructure to design and deploy virtual accelerators so as to enhance both scale and reach of entrepreneurship education 2) the use of a social entrepreneurship lens to illuminate how key stakeholders can work together as well as communicate policy changes that need to be incorporated for effective implementation of ecosystems 3) ecosystem developments that focus exploiting sector specific knowledge and expertise and lastly 4) ecosystem design considerations such as factors for effective ecosystem design and curriculum development in SSA.

Significant outcomes from the book are highlights of how academic entrepreneurship can be harnessed to overcome challenges facing SSA. The book showcases how digital technologies can be exploited to mainstream entrepreneurship and innovation within and beyond the universities — thus improving access to quality education and resources to a much broader audience access. In addition, the book demonstrates how to effectively engage all relevant stakeholders in an entrepreneurship ecosystem — including how to accurately identify all key stakeholders and assess their contextual needs in SSA education settings so as to inform ecosystem development strategies. Finally, the book showcases different approaches to entrepreneurship curriculum developments efforts — what it takes to develop, pilot, or enhance curriculum in SSA, as well as how provision of more support for students with specific mechanisms can be offered including different ways of including mentoring, coaching or incubation and building academic-industry partnership as a way of supporting students.

Contents:

• Foreword


• About the Editors


• About the Contributors


• Developing University-Led Entrepreneurship and Innovation Ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Transnational and Multidisciplinary Partnership Model (Dzidziso Samuel Kamuriwo, Sara Jones, Mary Wanjiru Kinoti, and Neil Marshall)


• The Design, Development, and Implementation of a Digital Platform to Enhance Value Co-Creation within an Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in Sub-Saharan Africa (John Oredo, Alison Pearce, Rose Quan, Duncan Ochieng Elly, Mark Bailey, and Fredrick Ndede)


• Exploiting Digital Platforms for Mainstreaming Entrepreneurship Education in a Kenyan University (Michael Zisuh Ngoasong, Isidora Kourti, Roselynn Kainyu, and David Kirop)


• Accelerating Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Tourism in Africa Through Co-Created Youth-Centered Innovation Ecosystem (Portia Pearl Siyanda Sifolo, David Chiawo, Marina Novelli, Kobby Mensah, Judy Kepher-Gona, Job Odhiambo, George Tsekouras, Aline Figlioli, Daniel Adidwa, Sarah Muigai, and Festus Mburu)


• Innovative Solutions to Reduce Post-Harvest Losses in Local Markets in Ghana: Opportunities and Challenges for Young Entrepreneurs (George Kobina van Dyck, Robert John Bell, and Charles Luanga Ayimbila Akpakia)


• Positioning Social Enterprise as an Engine for Economic Growth: Policy Discourse (Ernest Christian Winful, Michael Snowden, Josiah Nii Adu, Jamie P Halsall, Emelia Afriyie Ohene, Denis Hyams-Ssekasi, Frank Frimpong Opuni, Kofi Opoku-Asante, Elikem Chosneil Ocloo, and Logos Wisdom)


• The Role of Cross-Sector Social Partnerships in Enabling Social Value Creation and Social Entrepreneurial Learning and Practice by South African Youth (Carolyn Mc Millan and Deidré van Rooyen)


• An Approach to Developing Functional Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development: A Case Study of the Nexus Project (Adeyinka Adewale, Adunola Okupe, Sam Immanuel, Jean-Pierre Choulet, Barry Van Zyl, and Alica Peña Bizama)


• Fostering Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Nigerian Universities (Muyiwa Oyinlola, Arinola Adefila, Silifat Abimbola Okoya, Oluwaseun Kolade, Kunle Babaremu, Olubunmi Ajala, Bosun Tijani, and Esther Akinlabi)


• Integrating Innovation and Entrepreneurship into Curriculum Development within the Nigerian University System Using the University Co-Creation/Innovation Hub (U-COHUB) Model (Iheanacho Chukwuemeka Metuonu, Soji Megbowon, and Amos Akintayo Fatokun)


• Index

Readership: Practicing entrepreneurs; academics specialising in entrepreneurship and innovation; university curicculum planners for courses in entrepreneurship; developmental economists; economics and business undergraduate/post-graduate students.

Prof. Sam Kamuriwo is Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Bayes Business School and before joining Bayes (formerly Cass) in 2007, had extensive executive-level industry experience in Africa.Professor Kamuriwo’s primary research has been on technology-based firms, scale-ups, venture financing, corporate venturing, corporate governance, and entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems. Professor Kamuriwo was the principal lead for the £3m Innovation for African University (IAU) program whose goal was to strengthen university-based entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem across 24 Sub-Saharan Africa universities. Another £300, 000 funded project investigated the link between project-based capability development challenges and shortage of technical skills and project performance in major electricity investments in SSA. Sam’s overall interest is in the development of relevant skills-base to meet Africa’s future challenges.His research work has been published in leading innovation journals such as Research Policy and Journal of Product Innovation management and management journals such as Leadership Quarterly, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, British Journal of Management, Journal of Business Research. His research has received recognition from Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) research awards in 2013, 2015 and 2016 and has appeared in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings.Professor Kamuriwo teaches core strategy courses in master’s programs at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) and a long-running venturing elective for the MBAs. In 2010, he was a Visiting Scholar at Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania.Dr Sara Jones is a Reader in the Faculty of Management at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) and Director of the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice. Sara’s research and practice takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of creativity and design thinking in the contexts of innovation, education, and entrepreneurship. Her work explores the relationship between digital tools and human creative processes, both individual and collaborative, and especially in the context of creative problem-solving, design and co-creation.During her career, Sara has been a principal or co-investigator on funded research grants and contracts, together worth around £13 million, and has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers in academic conferences and journals. Sara has consulted for several major organizations and supervised 9 Ph D students to completion. She holds a Ph D in Computer Science from City, University of London. Neil Marshall is an entrepreneur and Development Director of Change School. He is an adjunct Faculty at King’s College, London’s Business School in Strategic Change, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Executive Education Pedagogy. Neil was Change School’s lead for the £3m British Council Innovation for African Universities (IAU) programme, working with 400 community members from 24 HEI partnerships and 86 organizations across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and the UK. He is leading entrepreneurial university transformation programs in Malaysia and Kazakhstan following similar engagements in Georgia, Armenia, and Uzbekistan. He is the core leadership programme designer for ETF’s T-Level Leadership (TLPD) residential programme for UK FE leaders and designed and led two editions of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Leaders in Innovation Fellowship (LIF) global engineering accelerator programme. Previously Neil has led England-wide reform programs in Education across 25, 000 schools.Neil holds an MBA from Cranfield University, a PGCE from Bristol University and a BA Hons from Birmingham University. He is accredited in the Hartman Value Profile, Prince2 and Six Sigma.Professor Mary Wanjiru Kinoti is an Associate Professor of Marketing, innovation and entrepreneurship at the Faculty of Business & Management Sciences, University of Nairobi, Kenya, with extensive experience in teaching and administration.In addition to her academic responsibility, Mary is the Director of the Intellectual Property Management Office. She coordinates innovation initiatives at the University of Nairobi, including intellectual property protection, capacity building, and commercialization of innovations. She also coordinates Nairobi Innovation Week , a global annual event that provides a platform to celebrate local and international innovations in partnership with government agencies, industry players, development agencies, business associations, academia, researchers, and students. She is well-published both locally and internationally in marketing. and entrepreneurship.