Profiling black African entrepreneurs in the UK, Prof. Sonny Nwankwo
Professor Sonny Nwankwo
University of East London,
United Kingdom
Abstract: Profiling Black Africans in terms of entrepreneurial characteristics is fraught with complications due, in part, to the diffused nature of their entrepreneurial endeavours. Whilst a pattern of market concentration is discernible at the co-ethnic level (i.e., first-entry market), there is little evidence of strategic evolution towards mainstreaming or the attainment of sectoral aggregation either at national or at regional level. As a result, they tend to suffer significant late mover disadvantages, which have continued to profoundly impact the growth and sustainability of their entrepreneurialism. This chapter, taken from a broader project, focuses on the more fundamental levels of personal involvement, i.e., the entrepreneurs themselves. It does this by providing a general characterisation of entrepreneurial orientations and thematically sketches a trajectory of underlying motivations. It is observed that many Black Africans embarked on entrepreneurship more to escape ethnic penalties than a strategic response to the structure of environmental opportunities. Thus, this ‘escapist mindset’ has meant that inadequate initial preparations have tended to characterise many African owned small businesses. Consequently, many are failure-prone and in need of strategic interventions to secure their growth and sustainability.
Citations：Nwankwo, S. (2011). Profiling black African entrepreneurs in the UK. In Nwanko, S. and Ahmed, A. (Eds.). In African Entrepreneurship in Global Context: Enterprise Solutions to Sustainable Development, Vol. 2, pp. 235–244. WASD: Brighton, United Kingdom.
