The African Network of Social Entrepreneurship Scholars meets to form Research Collaborations

Posted on September 04, 2019

A social entrepreneurship research workshop on forming research collaboration in Africa, organised by the Unit for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Pretoria, KU Leuven and the African Network of Social Entrepreneurship Scholars (ANSES), was held at the University of Pretoria from 14 to 16 August 2019. The workshop was attended by 30 scholars and 22 social entrepreneurs.
 
Prof Alex Antonites, Head of Department of Business Management, introduced the participants to the UP Social Entrepreneurship Research Team. He also discussed the role the University plays in the poverty alleviation initiatives in Mamelodi.
 
 
Dr Alex Bignotti, the social entrepreneurship research team leader and cofounder of ANSES outlined the type of research that is carried out in the unit, with its focus on social and indigenous entrepreneurs’ capacity building. He also emphasised the importance of ANSES as a resource and enabler for social entrepreneurship research in Africa.
 
 
Mohamed Farhoud, a researcher at the Unit for Social Entrepreneurship, cofounder and coordinator of ANSES, moderated the doctoral workshop, during which eight students presented their papers and received feedback from a group of social entrepreneurship scholars and methodologists. The students represented the University of Pretoria, the Nelson Mandela University, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the University of Agder (Norway), the University of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), the American University in Cairo (Egypt) and Makerere University (Uganda).
 
 
Prof Filip De Beule from KU Leuven (Belgium) and cofounder of the VLIR-UOS project—the project focuses on strengthening the African academic eco-system for social entrepreneurship as a catalyst to job creation—explained the goal of the project and gave a presentation on the status of social entrepreneurship enquiry and possible future research avenues.
 
 
The workshop included presentations by Pfungwa Nyamukachi from The Conversation Africa, Prof Shahida Cassim from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Prof Jacob Park from Green Mountain College in Vermont, and Prof Debbi Brock from Wingate University. The presentations discussed a wide range of topics, including how to communicate research to the public, design thinking applications to social enterprises in Africa, social entrepreneurship financing and investment opportunities, and developing a curriculum for social entrepreneurship education in Africa.
 
 
Kerryn Krige from the International Labour Organisation and cofounder of VLIR-UOS project discussed South Africa’s Green Paper on the Social Economy. She gave feedback on the current status of the policy and discussed the future plans. She also discussed the policy with the researchers and have been given inputs on the definitions of social economy and social enterprise.
 
 
Three research topics were agreed upon following a pre-workshop input. Prof Filip De Beule led the social entrepreneurship internationalisation research group, Prof Debbi Brock the curriculum development research group, and Profs Shahida Cassim and Jacob Park a research group on institutional voids in Africa and implication for social entrepreneurship.
 
 
The workshop concluded with presentations by the research groups’ leaders, during which they presented their projects and the way forward.
 
 
The organisers (from left to right): Alex Bignotti (UP), Filip De Beule (KU Leuven), and Mohamed Farhoud (UP and University of Turku)
 

 

- Author Department of Business Management

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