Purpose

This paper seeks to systematically review and synthesise existing research knowledge on African women entrepreneurship to identify gaps for future studies.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper conducted a systematic literature review of published studies from 1990 to 2020 on women entrepreneurship in Africa using a 5M gender aware framework of Brush et al. (2009).

Findings

The systematic literature review of published studies found the fragmentation, descriptive and prescriptive orientation of studies on Africa women entrepreneurship and devoid of theoretical focus. Further, women entrepreneurship studies tended to be underpinned from various disciplines, less from the entrepreneurship lens, mostly quantitative, and at its infancy stage of development. With a primary focus on development, enterprise performance and livelihood, studies rarely attended to issues of motherhood and the nuanced understanding of women entrepreneurship’s embeddedness in family and institutional contexts of Africa.

Research limitations/implications

The paper questions the view that women entrepreneurship is a “panacea” and unravels how family context, customary practices, poverty and, rural-urban and formal/informal divide, significantly shape and interact with African women entrepreneurs’ enterprising experience and firm performance.

Practical implications

The findings and analyses indicate that any initiatives to support women empowerment via entrepreneurship should consider the socially constructed nature of women entrepreneurship and the subtle interplay of the African institutional contexts’ intricacies, spatial and locational differences which significantly influence women entrepreneurs’ choices, motivations and goals for enterprising.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to a holistic understanding of women entrepreneurship in Africa by using a 5M framework to review the research knowledge. In addition, the paper not only identifies unexplored/or less examined issues but also questions the taken-for-granted assumptions of existing knowledge and suggest adoption of context- and gender-sensitive theories and methods.

中文翻译：

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非洲妇女创业回顾和未来研究议程

目的

本文旨在系统回顾和综合有关非洲女性创业的现有研究知识，以确定未来研究的差距。

设计/方法论/途径

该论文使用 Brush等人的 5M 性别意识框架，对 1990 年至 2020 年已发表的关于非洲女性创业的研究进行了系统的文献综述。（2009）。

发现

对已发表研究的系统文献回顾发现，非洲妇女创业研究的碎片化、描述性和规范性，缺乏理论重点。此外，女性创业研究往往以各种学科为基础，较少从创业角度出发，大多是定量的，并且处于发展的起步阶段。研究主要关注发展、企业绩效和生计，很少关注母性问题以及对非洲家庭和制度环境中女性创业精神嵌入程度的细致入微的理解。

研究局限性/影响

本文质疑女性创业是“万能药”的观点，并揭示了家庭背景、习惯做法、贫困以及城乡和正式/非正式鸿沟如何显着塑造非洲女企业家的创业经验和公司业绩并与之相互作用。

实际影响

研究结果和分析表明，任何通过创业支持妇女赋权的举措都应考虑女性创业的社会建构性质，以及非洲制度环境错综复杂、空间和地点差异之间的微妙相互作用，这些差异对女性企业家的选择、动机和目标产生重大影响为了进取。

原创性/价值

该论文通过使用 5M 框架回顾研究知识，有助于全面了解非洲女性创业精神。此外，本文不仅指出了未探索/或较少研究的问题，还对现有知识的理所当然的假设提出了质疑，并建议采用对背景和性别敏感的理论和方法。