posted on 2017-09-08, 12:07authored byRobert L. Afutu-Kotey, Katherine V. Gough, George Owusu
Despite increasing research interest in the mobile telephony sector, only a few studies have devoted attention to informal businesses in the sector. Using qualitative field data collected on young mobile telephony entrepreneurs in Accra, this paper argues that despite the businesses being ‘informal’, they cannot be dismissed as ‘necessity’ enterprises unworthy of support. On the contrary, many young entrepreneurs have aspirations which are influencing their desire to stay in business. The article thus questions the bifurcated nature of entrepreneurial motivations, using the burgeoning mobile telephony sector as a case study, and draws out implications for policy support for youth-run businesses in the informal sector generally.
Funding
This work was supported by the Consultative Research Committee for Development Research (FFU) under Danida [Project No 09-059KU]
History
School
Social Sciences
Department
Geography and Environment
Published in
Journal of African Business
Pages
1 - 16
Citation
AFUTU-KOTEY, R.L., GOUGH, K.V. and OWUSU, G., 2017. Young entrepreneurs in the mobile telephony sector in Ghana: From necessities to aspirations. Journal of African Business, 18 (4), pp. 476-491.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Acceptance date
2017-06-05
Publication date
2017
Notes
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of African Business on 1 Aug 2017, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/15228916.2017.1339252