New Perspectives on Entrepreneurial Clusters: The Evolution of African Industrial Clusters

Abstract

The study of entrepreneurship is perhaps less well developed in Africa than anywhere else in the world. The situation is somewhat paradoxical given that Africa contains some of the world's poorest countries, and that entrepreneurship is widely regarded as a major springboard for economic growth globally. We contribute to this quiet conversation through an examination of the emergence and contribution of entrepreneurial industrial clusters in Africa. Our approach is to search for insights within three largely separate academic discourses: entrepreneurship research, evolutionary economics, and development studies, in order to identify empirical studies which have addressed the development and impact of entrepreneurial clusters in Africa. We are able to identify relatively few studies -- only 25 of consequence. In doing so we show that the popular conception of industrial clusters in Africa as being stagnant or limited in their growth potential has been overtaken by events as the dynamics of African clusters have changed over the past three decades, whereas their image has remained the same. In particular, we identify four phases in the development of entrepreneurial clusters in Africa, and studies thereof: an early phase where survival itself is the focus; a phase in which clusters were seen as integrated into the industrialisation process; a phase in which the development, or lack of development, of an indigenous knowledge base was seen as the key issue; and, most recently a phase in which learning within clusters is seen as the key to future development. In reviewing what is known, and what remains to be discovered, about entrepreneurial industrial clusters in Africa we set out both a research agenda and give indicators that could help cluster facilitators and practitioners to improve the performance of actual clusters and the entrepreneurial firms within them.