How can institutions stimulate African local economic growth? After decades of poor economic growth, foreign aid-dependency, poor government policies and bureaucratic leadership by Africans in the 21st century, focus has increasingly shifted to the continent’s business systems, entrepreneurship and governance. Also, the improving trade relations between Africa and the rest of the world has brought a renewed interest on the region’s relatively slow economic growth. African Businesses and Economic Growth: Institutions, Firms, Practices and Policy  examines policy approaches to economic liberalization and the effects of global forces and, in particular, how Africa can respond to globalization pressures in order to assume its rightful place in the global economy. 

 

Contributors to the volume, including researchers from East and West Africa, have examined the role of African institutions and firms, and the ways they impact on local economic growth. In particular, they analyse how African firms generate, share and transfer knowledge, the role of human capital on productivity, the role and impact of informal institutions on private sector and institutional development, firms` responses to laws and rules set by policymakers (the rules of the game) and the effect these laws and rules have on firms` development and strategies. The book also examines the role of non-governmental institutions, multinational firms, bilateral and multilateral institutions and how their activities and policies influence the structure and strategies of local firms and economic growth. Most of the contributors conclude that a full scale economic growth, liberalization and institutionalization across the African economies, though inevitable,  are unlikely to be achieved overnight.

Dr Imani Silver Kyaruzi,  an Entrepreneurship and Economic Development analyst, is currently a lecturer in Economics and Entrepreneurship in the Department of Business, London Graduate School of Management, where he teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in Entrepreneurship and Economic Analysis. He is also Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Kragujevac, Serbia. His works on entrepreneurship and local economic growth have been published in English and Swahili. His main research interests include entrepreneurship and SME development – through business incubation and clustering, local economic growth models and development economics. He can be contacted at: editor@amjer.org