What is it about?
Why don't small businesses make use of the support services available in their local area? While it's easy to think of some likely reasons, policy makers need more systematic research evidence if they are to ensure that their often limited resources can be used more effectively.
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Why is it important?
Our article reports the findings of one of the first large scale studies to examine the 'non-use' of small business support services in Ghana. We also discuss the methods adopted and how they might be used in future evaluation studies. The article is therefore likely to be of value to policy-makers, researchers and practitioners working in other developing countries, and particularly across sub-Saharan Africa.
Perspectives
I gained a number of insights from discussions with my Ghanaian colleague (and lead author), Dr Bernard Acquah Obeng. His in-depth local knowledge of small business support in Ghana adds considerable weight to the empirical section of the paper. The article was one of the collaborative outputs from the ABLE-Ghana programme (2010-13), which examined the impact of different contexts on enterprise education and development initiatives.
Professor Richard K Blundel
Open University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Evaluating Enterprise Policy Interventions in Africa: A Critical Review of Ghanaian Small Business Support Services, October 2013, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1111/jsbm.12072.
You can read the full text:
Resources
ABLE-Ghana programme - report
This extract from the ABLE-Ghana end-of-project report discusses the nature of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and entrepreneurship in a Ghanaian context, clarifying our understanding of the informal sector, and identifying priority areas for curriculum development.
FREE Open Access full-text
Full-text available free of charge on the Open University's "Open Research Online" repository
Contributors
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