Abstract/Summary

There is strong evidence that young entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa are building start-up business ventures in isolation, under pressure, and disconnected from the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem, both contributing to high start-up failure rates. Ecosystem players such as academic institutions, industry partners, and investors have the knowledge, human and financial assets able to offer specialised technical and market support for young entrepreneurs. Yet, it seems that while relevant key stakeholders that make up functional innovation ecosystems are present, the synergy amongst them seems weak and needs to be strengthened if “job seekers” are to become “job creators”. This study proposes an approach to functional multi-stakeholder partnerships that can build thriving ecosystems to support young entrepreneurs in Africa. It presents some of the strategies adopted on the Nexus Project to strengthen the entrepreneurship ecosystem around young entrepreneurs in Nigeria that has resulted in their transformation from “locked” to “unlocked” to “investable” entrepreneurs. The study revealed that an approach to building functional ecosystems in the African context requires a shared vision and values-based engagement between entrepreneurship ecosystem stakeholders. The alignment of a few stakeholders sharing a common goal enhanced the chances of accessing wider ecosystem stakeholders and by extension resulted in effective engagements with other players and positive outcomes for young start-up founders. The spillover effect of the values that underpinned the first level of the partnerships in the wider ecosystem is proof that silos can be broken down when relevant stakeholders take responsibility for this.