Week 3: Entrepreneurship, migration and inclusive growth

Introduction

Welcome to Week 3 of the course. Last week, you looked at the broad debates surrounding migration and development and how they relate to inclusive growth; this week, you will delve deeper into this topic by looking at the migration–growth connection through a lens of entrepreneurship to ask:

• What and how do migrant business owners contribute to their host countries?
• What are they doing that is different or unique compared to non-migrants?

In addressing these questions, we focus mainly on two of the course learning outcomes:

2. Understand the main debates and dimensions of inclusive growth.
3. Appreciate and apply some of the methodologies for trying to measure inclusive growth.

You will be introduced to the main points and arguments in existing bodies of work, but will pay particular attention to entrepreneurship in Africa. You will also build on your experiences of data analysis from Week 2, this time using the MIAG firm survey data to explore the differing ways in which migrant businesses benefit African economies.

Watch Video 3.1, in which Bill Maloney, Chief Economist for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions in the World Bank Group, talks about entrepreneurship in developing countries.

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Transcript: Video 3.1 Start-ups to scale-ups.

This agenda is one of increasing importance for us. We face right now – in the world, in developing countries – a problem of low productivity growth in general, and probably, particularly in the case of resource exporters, deficient diversification of economies.

Certainly in Latin America right now, a lot of folks are saying, ‘Hey, my commodity prices have now become a third of what they were before. I need to have many more industries that are exporting and that will cushion me from these shocks in the future.’ That’s great. Somebody needs to do that, and that’s not the state.

So, question is, are there entrepreneurs who are capable of entering new markets on a large scale and creating these new industries? It’s the same thing with the literature on structural transformation: ‘We have to get out of agriculture, out of primary goods and into manufacturers or services.’ That’s great, but that’s not something you do by fiat; you have to have entrepreneurs on the ground who are opening those new industries, creating those new opportunities.

So all of these things that we say from 80,000 feet – ’Oh, this has to happen, or this should happen or we’ve seen in the past this happen’ – when you get down to the ground, there are people, individual entrepreneurs, who are pushing this agenda or pushing these industries for growth, and we have to understand them more.

End transcript: Video 3.1 Start-ups to scale-ups.

Video 3.1 Start-ups to scale-ups.

If you think back to the key debates, one of the trends that was highlighted was the tendency by agencies such as the World Bank, to approach inclusive growth from a national perspective. Maloney flips this thinking on its head and suggests that small-scale entrepreneurs are a critical component to triggering economic diversification and catalysing market growth.

3.1 What are the entrepreneurship, migration and growth debates?

Before we move to take a more detailed look at entrepreneurship and growth, try Activity 3.1.

As you discovered last week, there is an extensive history and literature surrounding the migration–development nexus and growth. The picture is similar with entrepreneurship. As early as 1725, the economist Richard Cantillon was theorising ‘the entrepreneur’, which carried through to the writings of the Scottish economist Adam Smith and the philosopher and political-economist John Stuart Mill.

Common to their thinking was the recognition that entrepreneurial behaviour was characterised by individuals adding value to the economy and markets by introducing new commodities. The entrepreneur is someone who sees opportunity for pioneering new products or processes and brings together the necessary resources to exploit that opportunity, while creating an environment of effective competition (Higgins, 1968; Kuratiko, 2015).

Classic economic theory sees entrepreneurship as a critical component in the expansion of an economy’s productive capacity (Kent, 1982) and, as such, it is viewed as an investment imperative for economic growth and development. In the 1930s, Joseph A. Schumpeter conceptualised and defined the role and activities that the entrepreneur contributed to the economic system, casting the entrepreneur as the personification of innovation (Hagedoorn, 1996).

The Schumpeterian view dominated economic thought for most of the 20th century – the entrepreneur as a risk-taking profit-maximiser who contributes to economic growth by disturbing the market equilibrium through the introduction of (Gries and Naudé, 2011):

• new technology
• competition (more efficient uses of resources)
• markets.

This view is very functionalist: that entrepreneurship is a vehicle for growth outputs. In fact, it is viewed within economics as one of the four key factors of production, along with land, labour and capital. Entrepreneurship, then, is just a means towards an end: to further economic growth. There is a notable absence in the welfare economics literature to examine the characteristics, roles and motivations that might sit behind entrepreneurial activity.

For economists, entrepreneurship as a determinant in growth is not contested. Over the past two decades or so, academic attention has started to take a more critical look at different facets and factors of the entrepreneur-growth story through development and entrepreneurial literatures.

The migration literatures have not advanced much in relation to how migration contributions to growth are viewed and studied. Two key trends prevail:

• To concentrate on what migrants are sending back, or what they give back to their home economies once they return. While home is still a focus, how migrants might contribute has expanded beyond remittances to consider other resources such as skills and networks (Saxenien, 2005; Anwar and Chan, 2016).
• A preoccupation with growth and development at the individual and household level – how the migration experience equates to change in standards of living, income and expanding opportunities to access education and other services.

While there is a prevalence of literature on entrepreneurship, migration and growth, the way in which the relationship is conceptualised and studied has, to date, been narrow and focused on the individual level and home. There is almost no literature on how and why migrants contribute to growth in their host country, or what the entrepreneur’s role is within inclusive growth (IG). This has been a novelty that MIAG has brought to this body of work, particularly by paying attention to growth at the firm level.

3.2 What do we mean by ‘entrepreneur’?

The MIAG project focused on migrant businesspeople, specifically those that own small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These migrants are held to be particularly entrepreneurial and have great potential to contribute to growth in the countries that they operate in. Before considering how they might drive more inclusive growth, you need to ask the following questions:

• What is entrepreneurship?
• Who is an entrepreneur?

Joseph A. Schumpeter is credited with setting the first definitive explanation of the role and activities that define an entrepreneur, and his work remains highly influential. Video 3.2 introduces his key ideas.

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Transcript: Video 3.2 What is entrepreneurship?

Welcome to the essential ideas of Joseph Schumpeter.

For those aware of Schumpeter, it's likely his work on the nature and importance of entrepreneurship, where he made his greatest contributions to economics. Schumpeter saw the entrepreneur as more than just a business owner: entrepreneurs are the people who experiment with what he called new combinations of resources. With these, they create new products and services, and new methods of production. They discover new markets and resources, and even find new, more efficient ways to organise businesses.

Here's an example. Suppose Sam opens a pizza parlour; Schumpeter would not consider Sam an entrepreneur, simply because he opens a restaurant. What makes Sam an entrepreneur, in Schumpeter's view, is that Sam introduces new types of pizzas, using unique combinations of toppings that no one has contemplated before, like pineapples and bacon with whole wheat crust, and he revolutionises how customers order and receive pizzas, by offering free delivery by drones. This innovation and experimentation lead to new products, new services and new markets, which is what makes Sam an entrepreneur.

Schumpeter also addressed another important aspect of entrepreneurship: the role of profits and losses. If a new idea (in this case, new pizzas and how they're delivered) motivates customers to buy the product at prices at least sufficient to cover the costs, then it's successful. On the other hand, if the new pizza (topped with, say, pickles and rotten eggs) is put up for sale but people don't buy it, the financial losses signal that it doesn't meet customer wants and needs, and the business loses money and eventually closes.

The prospect of profits is what leads entrepreneurs to innovate in the first place. But equally important are financial losses, which also help guide entrepreneurs and resources towards successful endeavours. For Schumpeter, entrepreneurs and their innovative products, services and processes are the key drivers of economic growth and prosperity.

For more information on Joseph Schumpeter, visit essentialschumpeter.org, and to learn about more Essential Scholars, visit essentialscholars.org.

End transcript: Video 3.2 What is entrepreneurship?

Video 3.2 What is entrepreneurship?

Under the Schumpeterian view, one cannot be called an entrepreneur simply by virtue of being self-employed and setting up a business. The essential part of being an entrepreneur is to introduce something new (innovating) by experimentation, so generating ‘new combinations’ of ideas and resources. There are four main ways through which this can happen (Audretsch and Keilbach, 2004).

It is important to note that the dimensions of innovation that distinguish entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive. The entrepreneur may indeed only be introducing one dimension, but could, equally, be bringing a novel combination – or all four, as the pizza company demonstrates. You should note that there may even be overlap with the illustrations from the video: online ordering could also be a new product by introducing a new app, or the drone service opening up previously untapped markets.

Having looked at the fundamental understandings of what constitutes entrepreneurship, it is time to turn to the entrepreneur. Are there particular characteristics or motivators that differentiate the entrepreneur from other members of the labour market? There is such a wealth of literature and research on this topic that it is impossible to go into any meaningful level of detail here; but there is some received wisdom that holds particular traits as key, such as:

• having access to resources to start new ventures
• a willingness to take risks and be competitive
• a host of personal attributes – adaptability, motivation, creativity, resilience.

Instead of plumbing the depths of such a vast literature we will focus on the migrant entrepreneur who is often differentiated for being considered ‘super’ when compared to hosting national entrepreneurs in the migration-development field.

Because MIAG focused on migration flows within and to Africa, one of the key questions that the project asked is whether there was anything particular or different about African entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs who are migrating to the continent. In Video 3.3, Abiola George (a MIAG team member) and Stella Opoku-Owusu (Deputy Director of the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD)) discuss this issue, which we will also expand on in subsequent sections.

Activity 3.5: Entrepreneurship in Africa

Timing: Allow approximately 25 minutes

Watch Video 3.3 and use the space below to answer the questions that follow.

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Transcript: Video 3.3 Entrepreneurship in Africa.

Abiola George:

So, Stella: there’s, I would say, general consensus around the idea that entrepreneurship is good for economic growth and development, because of the innovations that entrepreneurs bring, or are said to bring, to the table. Now, from the perspective of Africa and entrepreneurship, depending on who you listen to, it can be cast as problematic; or that entrepreneurship in Africa is being driven by multinational companies or foreign investment. But we know that this is not the only story. And I would like to hear from your perspective, working with AFFORD and the people that you have interacted with, is there something different and distinct about diaspora Africans doing entrepreneurship in Africa?

Stella Opoku-Owusu:

Thanks for the question, Abiola. Great question. I always enjoy these discussions, where there’s always this question around the problematic side, if you like, of diaspora – and then also, of course, the positive side or the beneficial side, right? I think generally, we do like to say that everything can be seen in black and white, or everything can be seen in two ways, where you have the positives and you have the negatives. I think the important thing is that we see the diaspora as added value to the continent, and not there to replace entrepreneurs on the ground, but actually to add value to what’s already going on.

So we focus on diaspora entrepreneurship, and we’ve worked with a number of diaspora entrepreneurs over the years. And for us, these diaspora entrepreneurs are people who reside, of course, outside of the continent or outside of their countries of heritage. They continue to engage with the continent or with their home countries; they have businesses on the ground that they are looking to grow, as well.

And then you also have within this mix, you’ve also got diaspora investors as well – themselves, who are looking to support entrepreneurs, who are looking to support businesses on the ground. And you’ve also got diaspora individuals and others who also contribute through skills-sharing: so it could be mentoring, could be coaching and so on, and supporting businesses on the ground. And this kind of makes up or is part of that ecosystem on the ground. And it’s particularly important.

Now, the diaspora themselves – and perhaps I should also add, actually, that the diaspora also make a contribution to the SME sector, as well, in particular, because they work at that sort of level, as well. And of course, as we know, the SME sector in Africa contributes the majority of jobs on the ground. And so this, for us, is particularly crucial in terms of the intervention that the diaspora make.

So diaspora entrepreneurs also provide finance because they invest in their own businesses. They also provide skills. We’ve worked with a number of entrepreneurs within the IT sector, or agriculture, or import/export, and they’re all very concerned and very focused on how they develop their teams on the ground. And a lot of this is around skills transfer, as well. And this is also about developing institutions that are also sustainable on the ground.

And then you’ve also got diaspora making an impact, or making a social impact, as well. This is something that we’ve seen as quite natural, in a sense, for the diaspora, because often, they are looking at where the gaps are, and they are also looking at where the challenges are, in a sense. So it really is about where they see a challenge, there’s an opportunity. And that’s where they make their own intervention.

A lot of the diaspora also come with local assets, as well. And this could be property, could be land – it could be all sorts of assets that also adds to their motivation to either have a business or to grow a business as well. But these are all the contributions – finance, skills, making a social impact, local assets – these are all the contributions that the diaspora bring as entrepreneurs, or even as investors.

In terms of the topic around inclusive growth, the diaspora also have a real stake in doing business in Africa. They have motivations which have to do with family, in some cases, or the fact that they themselves would like to return at some point in the future. They are looking towards their pension, as well. So it really is also an investment for them, in that sense.

Of course, they’ve also got an emotional connection as well with the continent. If they are first-generation, it’s very direct. If they are second-generation, it’s what we call ‘emotional heritage’ as well. But in both cases, they have this motivation and this desire to make a contribution.

And of course, they are also constant, as well, in terms of their contribution. And if we begin to look at the data that exists – if we take remittances that go into the continents – we can see that, over the years, remittances have increased or they’ve stayed stable. And if you compare that to foreign direct investment, which has declined and is set to decline over the next few years even more, if you take overseas development aid, where remittances far exceed overseas development aid, as well – so the diaspora for us are really the largest stakeholder or the largest investor into the continent.

Last year, there were projections of about 20% decline of remittances on the continent by the World Bank. But actually, in the end – in spite of the pandemic – this was more around 2 or 3%, as opposed to 20%. The important thing in relation to diaspora entrepreneurs when it comes to remittances is that it’s also estimated by the World Bank that about 20% of remittances goes to some kind of investment as well.

Now, if you were to take entire remittances – and by that, I mean formal remittances, informal, i.e., the monies that go back with us in our purses and so forth, and social remittances, which is around skills transfer – it’s estimated that this is around US$200 billion. So if you take 20% of that, that’s the contribution that diaspora entrepreneurs are making to the continent every year. Now, this excludes diaspora direct investments, where diaspora entrepreneurs themselves make their own direct interventions into the business area, including skills transfer. Unfortunately, there’s no reliable data that’s out there for this – but we know it, because we’re doing the work in this area, and we have our own small sort of data to prove this. But on a wider scale, that data is not available. But in terms of AFFORD’s own work over the last five, six, seven years, we’ve created about 1000 jobs through the diaspora. We’ve invested about £1.5 million, which includes about £500,000 that have been raised through the diaspora as a match fund.

So this element of diaspora contributing as entrepreneurs is particularly significant. But also, just understanding that actually, in terms of inclusive growth in relation to entrepreneurship and business on the ground, it does include diaspora contributions and diaspora entrepreneurs, diaspora investors, because they already are part of the society – as we were saying earlier, Abiola, they are in both places, right? They are at home, they are abroad, and that’s how they make their contributions.

Abiola George:

Thank you, Stella. That’s actually very fascinating. And some of the detail starting to come out, and I think you make two important points that I want to highlight from what you’ve said: the difference between multinational companies, international companies, coming to do business in Africa versus diaspora businesses – the idea of, the fact that the diaspora, they’re here for the long term. They have an emotional connection. They’re here for impact, whether it’s social impact, financial impact, addressing the real gaps that they can see.

And also, being more inclusive, as it were, sort of looking at areas that unfortunately data doesn’t capture, which I think also is one of the reasons why we’re not seeing the accurate depiction of entrepreneurship in Africa and diaspora impact, because of these things that you have mentioned that are real, but there’s no hard data to prove them. So thank you very much for that.

So the other question that I wanted to pose to you was about female entrepreneurship. Just to ask you, from the work that you’re doing, are you seeing female participation? And how is that looking from your perspective?

Stella Opoku-Owusu:

Thanks, Abiola, In terms of female participation, I always answer this question by saying that, actually, in terms of what we’ve seen, we’ve normally had about 50% of the pool of entrepreneurs that we support have always been female. It’s often around 50%, or just under or just over 50%. So for us, from the diaspora side, at least in the countries that we’ve worked in, there’s a real drive on the female entrepreneurship side. And there doesn’t seem to be a specific challenge there, in terms of how they engage.

If we look, of course, at the wider data when it comes to female entrepreneurship versus other entrepreneurship, there is a sense that females are perhaps more empathetic, in a sense. So I suppose that plays a lot into the area of social impact. So if there’s anything that we’ve seen, perhaps it’s the fact that we’ve often seen organisations that are led by women who are looking at a way to move their charity into a social enterprise space. And the challenge for them there is about balancing out that social impacts that they want to make versus the sustainability element. And that’s where we support them with.

But you will also see this with businesses that are led by men as well where, even though they understand that they are doing business, that balance and understanding where you place the social impact versus where you place the finance is often not evident – it’s often not particularly strong. And this is where we come in to also provide the capacity to the diaspora, as well.

Abiola George:

Thank you very much – very fascinating. And that brings us to the end of our conversation. Thank you for listening.

Stella Opoku-Owusu:

Thank you.

End transcript: Video 3.3 Entrepreneurship in Africa.

Video 3.3 Entrepreneurship in Africa.

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

• What are the main theories and arguments around entrepreneurship in Africa? Identify any gaps and problems with them.
• What, if anything, is different or unique about the entrepreneurs in Africa and the nature of their entrepreneurship?
• In what ways are entrepreneurs contributing to more IG? Highlight three or four non-typical benefits that entrepreneurs add.

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Discussion

There is actually little in Abiola and Stella’s conversation around specific theories of entrepreneurship in Africa. This is because, as they highlight, the African migration entrepreneurship and business debates are problematic, largely equating growth and development with multinational companies and foreign investment.

However, what they capture in their discussion is a richness and diversity of how migration to Africa might be different and – through this uniqueness – contributing to IG. They do this by focusing on a particular migratory group: African diaspora. These are first- and second-generation Africans living outside of the continent but operating businesses and investing in their countries of heritage.

While much of the information and observations that they make are not relatable to many of the other foreign nationality groups MIAG looked at (such as Europeans, Chinese, Indians), their conversation around Africa and entrepreneurship is very important.

Think back to the end of Week 1 where MIAG’s principal investigator Giles Mohan said that a definition of IG can and should draw generalisations that might be applicable across migration more broadly, but it is critical to be mindful of the subtleties of context. By concentrating on the peculiarities of African diaspora, Abiola and Stella are doing just that. Stella highlighted a range of the African diaspora’s entrepreneurship; she mentioned the value of remittances, which we have heard elsewhere, but she goes further, citing diaspora as:

• finance providers
• interested in team development, supporting local capacity-building and skills and knowledge transfer
• looking to have social impact through social enterprises and having access to local assets.

In terms of IG, they mentioned that diaspora is largely engaged through SME interventions, which contribute the most in terms of job creation in African economies. However, there is an exceptionality afforded to diaspora on account of heritage, which holds an emotional connection and brings familial ties. This, Stella maintains, brings an engagement with business in Africa that is more constant and more long-term – for many it is tied to their retirement or pension package.

Essentially the diaspora is, as Stella put it, ‘already part of the ecosystem on the ground’, which may bring advantages that foreign migrants are unable to access or tap into to contribute.

3.3 How do we study the SME, entrepreneurship and migration?

You have looked at the mixed methods approach in MIAG, combining both quantitative and qualitative data-collection techniques. So far, you have looked at the macro-quantitative dataset and used different indicators to explore the relationship between migration and growth. You then examined extracts from semi-structured interviews. These can help you to delve deeper behind the high-level macro-data that is telling us ‘what’ is happening, to unpack the more complex picture of ‘why’ causal connections are taking place. Here we turn to the third aspect of the methodology, the business survey.

A survey is a ‘means for gathering information about the characteristics, actions, or opinions of a large group of people’ (Pinsonneault and Kraemer, 1993, p. 77). They are a primary data-collection tool that involves devising a list of questions around the research topic. The questioning is often closed – ‘yes or no’ answers, or multiple choice – but surveys can include open questions that allow the respondent to give more varied answers. They differ fundamentally from an interview in that they are not the more free-flowing conversation you find in semi-structured interviewing. Kraemer (1991) notes that the distinguishing characteristics of surveys are that:

• they employ quantitative data to describe a chosen population
• survey research is collected from people, and so will be subjective
• they use data from a selected portion of a population to generalise back to wider society.

The wider field of study around entrepreneurship has, to date, largely relied on quantitative data (Jack et al., 2010); qualitative methods are used, but are limited relative to the tendency towards gathering statistical data. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), for example, says that it is ‘the world’s foremost study of entrepreneurship since 1999’. GEM is a network of national country teams that deploys surveys to collect data on the nature and characteristics of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship ecosystems.

This is a trend that we see carried into the migration and development literatures. The study of entrepreneurial migrants has favoured focusing on capturing quantitative data through the macro-transfers and flows of finances through remittance, or the micro-level impact on the individual migrant or their household. MIAG has been original in its approach of the survey paying particular attention to the firm level. There are strengths and weaknesses attached to any data method and surveys are no exception.

Watch Video 3.4, in which MIAG team members Dr Dinar Kale (The Open University) and Solomon Mugane (African Migration and Development Policy Centre) talk about how they developed the survey for MIAG and analysed the data.

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Transcript: Video 3.4 Developing and analysing the MIAG survey.

Solomon Mugane:

So, Dr Dinar, why did MIAG require a survey?

Dinar Kale:

Thanks, Solomon, for that very interesting question. One of the unique aspects of MIAG’s study has been its approach to the survey. In migration studies, you will find that surveys have historically been a very common way for both researchers as well as policy-makers to get a lot of information very quickly on a large number of migrants.

Most of the times, these surveys have tended to focus on individual migrants. The data is typically about looking at migration history, experience and how it has impacted their lives as well as their families’ lives. Where we differ in our use of survey was we were looking at migrant business owners, and specifically those who owned and operated small/medium enterprises, SMEs.

MIAG survey differentiates and defines businesses using OECD’s SME and entrepreneurship outlook report categories. Firms are understood to be independent or subsidiaries of multinational companies that can be part of both formal or informal economy. And these categories include the sole trader, family or partnerships.

Now in total, in MIAG project involved conducting a survey of 1200 participants spread over four African countries. The primary purpose of conducting a survey of migrant and local firms was to establish the nature and extent of their contribution towards inclusive growth. This survey was aimed at bridging the gap between the secondary quantitative data, and the primary data collected through semi-structured interviews.

The secondary quantitative data look at in Weeks 1 and 2: you will have noticed that allowed us to describe a particular type of phenomena. So it gives you a descriptive analysis of what is happening. But that data doesn’t tell you, or doesn’t allow you, to really start understanding why a particular trend is happening.

One survey is still largely an exercise in quantitative data-gathering. It allows us to unpack more of the finer details of what was happening below the quantitative trends in a quantitative way. For example, quantitative data shows that there is an increasing trend of south–south migration, but it doesn’t tell you, what is the nature or what is the purpose of that migration.

That’s where the survey data feeds. Survey data allows us to understand the nature and purpose of this migration trend. Further, the cross-referencing of survey data with the interviews helps to create a much richer and deeper analysis of the phenomena in this study. Finally, there is a clear lack of survey data that is for some business owners operating at small and medium-scale firms, contributing firms.

The MIAG survey data brilliantly or excellently contributes to creating a unique database that was absent in the migration research conducted in academia and policy think tanks. These were primarily two critical reasons why MIAG needed a survey.

Solomon Mugane:

Dr Dinar, how did we develop the survey aligning with the OECD framework logical, culturally key information?

Dinar Kale:

Thanks for that question. And it was indeed a relatively complicated process. The development of the survey, we did it in two stages. First stage involved locating the participants, while the second, and the more complicated and critical step, involved creating a survey instrument.

The first step, we relied on business directories, street surveys in areas where manufacturing, IT and service sector firms are more concentrated. Now I will elaborate on the process of creating the survey instrument. There were a number of steps involved in that. The first was conducting a thorough literature review to identify the key attributes of inclusive growth.

We also found that the OECD report, which title was ‘The policy action on inclusive growth’, provides a good conceptual framework for our research. It was agreed that the survey instrument will align with the conceptualisation of inclusive growth identified in the OECD report.

We then reviewed the survey instruments used for collecting the similar type of data by international organisations, policy think tanks and academic scholars. We, based on all activities, then developed a rough draft of a survey. That was finalised after a few iterations, involving feedback from the project members as well as the pilot testing with some participants.

The final survey was divided into nine different sections. It focused on collecting some background data on the respondents and also, critically, the role of their businesses in facilitating inclusive growth. We categorised the questions related to conceptual framework of inclusive growth as a core and compulsory question.

These questions were selected covering what we thought we would need to be able to analyse how these businesses were contributing to inclusive growth. We adopted a structured survey instrument, where the questions asked were standardised, so that each respondent is exactly asked the same question in the same order.

The goal is that the questions are asked as consistently as possible, without interference by the interviewer, a perspective that assumes that the legal, social research can be truly objective. The survey questions included a mix of different styles of questions and responses, and these responses can be categorical or numerical. For example, the categorical responses can be yes or no, or one from a number of choices, while the numerical responses can be a continuous range (for example, ‘What’s your age?’) or discrete (like, ‘What’s your turnover?’) or scale (‘On the scale of 1 to 5, how do you rate government’s migration policies?’).

Further, we adopted a quota sampling method, where we divided the sampling frame into three sub-groups of business owners, both nationals and locals. We then set a target of 50 locals and 250 migrants, split in each country as a control to capture the key various characteristics of migrant businesses and inclusive growth relationships. This survey data provided rich information that allowed us to bridge and triangulate the quantitative interview datasets.

Solomon, you played a really important role in cleaning, organising and analysing the data. Can you please elaborate in how you cleaned, organised and analysed this data?

Solomon Mugane:

Thank you, Dinar. That was very informative. And I’ll take on my part. Insights, decisions and policies are as good as the data they are based on. It is therefore imperative that data must be of good quality. My role on the project was to handle the data processing, cleaning and management of the analysis that would help ensure the quality of real survey datasets.

The way the collection tool we used (that is, KoBo Toolbox) works, all the submitted data streams into one central point. Caution must be taken to avoid mixing up or losing data. The first critical task I had to do was to disaggregate the data by country, as the basis for cleaning it. This would help in assessing and determining the quality and the different aspects of country data independently.

The uniqueness of the survey was mutual exclusivity of data for a business. Only one submission was required from the business, and preferably, from the business owner. Any duplicates were deleted.

The survey targeted international migrants and international-owned businesses within the individual countries. Any other outliers were irrelevant and has deleted. Others deleted were columns that bore raw data. For all the open-ended questions, relevant answers were grouped into categories to ease analysis. However, some open-ended responses remain relevant independently, like the country of origin, villages, names of businesses, time, et cetera. Answers to critical questions like country of origin were fixed or structured, then conventional naming, typos and incorrect characterisations. The age of the business was counter-checked against the year the business was started and corrections made.

The multiple selection questions required a technical approach, as choices are space-separated in one cell. For example, in a question with options A, B, C, D, E and F, and where A, C and E are the selected choices, the data appears in one cell as A C E. The choices were split into different columns. Any specified columns and blank cells worked on as explained above, and the identity metric columns deleted.

The recent staffing had been captured as the actual number of employees. That, nonetheless, was and is incomparable. The data was converted into proportions for ease of use. Upon cleaning of all columns, the data was validated for use in analysis, and creation of additional variables, e.g. age groups.

During analysis, comparing different background groups and the role they play in inclusivity and growth was key. This called for creation of a variable based on the country of origin of the micro-business owners. They were classified as either intercontinental south–south, north–south or regional migrants, again as the control group, local business owners. Analysis involved, first of all, descriptive statistics for individual questions, and customisation of the new migrant variables against all questions with special focus on the critical questions.

For multiple-choice questions, the descriptive statistics were based on all choices and not just the first choice. Excel was used in all these, but other packages could be used as well.

Thank you.

Now, Dr Dinar, could you introduce us the next activity that would survey data analysis?

Dinar Kale:

Thanks for the question, Solomon. And thanks for a really good explanation about how you clean, organise and analyse the data. So, in the next activity, students will be looking at a small sample of survey data that we have collected to investigate three questions about the contribution of migrant owner businesses to inclusive growth.

Three different sets of data, focusing on key attributes of inclusive growth, have been selected for this activity. These include the factors supporting the expansion of business, the number of employees, and salary and other benefit options for the employees. Students will be comparing data from Kenya and Ghana. Thank you. All the best.

End transcript: Video 3.4 Developing and analysing the MIAG survey.

Video 3.4 Developing and analysing the MIAG survey.

3.4 Why are women entrepreneurs so important?

Creating gender equality in the workplace, and more specifically business, is a pressing global challenge.

Back in Week 1, the OECD video ‘The power of four billion’ made a compelling case that ‘the laws, attitudes and practices discriminating against them represent a huge cost to the global economy’ (OECD, 2018). If labour markets can be opened up and made more enabling for women to access in the same way that men do, then their contribution to growth would be hugely significant – or so the argument goes.

The quotation above from the Kauffman Foundation refers to the United States, but it is a similar story around the world – although these figures will be significantly lower in many developing parts of the world. Women are disproportionately disadvantaged and excluded compared to men when it comes to work.

Activity 3.8: Migrant women

Timing: Allow approximately 10 minutes

Before we look at migrant women and entrepreneurship in these narratives, spend a few minutes thinking about what images are conjured up for you when you hear the term ‘migrant women’. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What type of women are they?
• Where are they from?
• Why are they migrating?
• What type of work do they do?

Now watch Video 3.5 on women migrant workers. How does it compare with your thoughts? (Note that the video mentions ‘CEDAW’, which is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (OHCHR, 1979).)

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Transcript: Video 3.5 Business and women’s human rights: women migrant workers.

Poverty, war, natural disasters and environmental ruin, unfair cultural practices, and violence against women are just some of the factors that are pushing women to migrate to other countries in search of employment and a better life. However, women are not only being driven to leave their homeland due to unfavourable conditions, but are also attracted to the possibility of achieving economic independence.

Some countries are displaying a demand for women workers based on stereotypical beliefs about women’s suitability for certain tasks, based on ill-conceived beliefs of women submissiveness, appropriateness for simple repetitive tasks, being inexpensive to employ and easy to control.

Consequently, women migrant workers tend to be limited to occupations such as working on the assembly line in factories, in sweatshops, and cleaning and serving in hospitals, restaurants and private residences.

Once women do decide to embark on a journey of migration, they are prone to experience serious rights violations at every stage of the migration process. Some women will experience discrimination even before departure due to their country of origin having imposed bans or restrictions on migrating based on sex, age, marital status, pregnancy, age of children or maternity status.

During transit, some women face sexual and physical abuse from the agents or escorts before reaching their country of destination. Arriving in the country of destination is when women’s expectations can be quickly destroyed, often simply due to a lack of proper information on the migration process and on employment opportunities.

Unprepared women migrants can immediately find themselves in countries that have formal legal restrictions or bans on female employment in certain sectors. In addition, informal discrimination is justified based on religion or tradition in the country of arrival, resulting in the funnelling of female workers into the informal sector.

The informal sector is largely made up of jobs over which there is little or no official control. In certain jobs, they may not even be defined as employees under law – thereby being deprived of legal protections that are available to recognised employees. An example is regularly seen in factories that manufacture and supply the products to multinational corporations.

Due to the absence of any binding contracts, workers may face forms of discrimination such as working long hours without overtime pay; working in overcrowded, unsafe, and unsanitary conditions, with limited access to health services, and undergoing mandatory HIV/AIDS and other testing without consent; suffering sexual and physical abuse; and food and sleep deprivation.

But protection for women migrant workers is growing. A number of international treaties relevant to women migrant workers’ rights are now in place, and foremost amongst them is CEDAW. In 2008, CEDAW adopted General Recommendation Number 26, which provides guidance on how states should meet their obligations to protect and promote the human rights of women migrant workers.

GR26 details the specific sex and gender-based human rights issues that migrant women workers face in their countries of origin, both before departure and after they return, in transit countries, and in destination countries. GR26 also categorises state obligations to prevent discrimination and respect the rights of women migrant workers in the country of origin, transit and destination.

Furthermore, GR26 defines different categories of migrant women and identifies the multi-layered facets of discrimination, and how this invariably impacts women migrant workers. Governments must enact laws prohibiting discrimination against women migrant workers and must address gender stereotypes and ensure protection for these women. Understanding CEDAW helps gender activists to ensure better protection for women migrant workers.

End transcript: Video 3.5 Business and women’s human rights: women migrant workers.

Video 3.5 Business and women’s human rights: women migrant workers.

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Discussion

The narration starts with a litany of factors that may be the cause of female migration, but there is a common denominating trope that the key drivers of women’s migration are negative. To name just a few reasons, women are forced to migrate because of:

• discrimination
• poverty
• violence
• human trafficking.

Women’s migration has historically seen their mobilities filtered through a particular set of patterns and trends like this.

Video 3.5 shows that these negative causes mean that women lack a sense of self-agency or conscious choice. They move and seek a better life not necessarily because they want to but because of adverse living conditions at home.

Much of the academic literature has viewed women as passive and secondary actors in the migratory process, by which we mean that women migrate as a consequence of male migration: the husband, brother or other family members move for work, and the women’s relocation only transplants existing familial dynamics and roles into the new country.

Women as economic migrants is largely an overlooked area of study and where it has been studied it is centred on women in particular roles and sectors. This is not exclusive to academic literature but appears in popular discourse and, as stated in the video, is informing national policies. Women have been viewed as less skilled and educated, cheaper to employ, and far more likely to be found in the informal sector relative to their male counterparts. Further, there is frequently an implicit assumption (as we have seen with other migration discourses) that a lot of this migration is from developing to developed countries.

The types of characteristics associated with entrepreneurs outlined earlier this week, such as drive, risk-taking or ego, were typically thought to be masculine traits. The few studies on women’s entrepreneurship contrasted them with male entrepreneurs and these attributes. The bias inherent in this approach meant that results frequently found women to be less ‘entrepreneurial’, rather than examining women in their own right to see if they inhabit very different qualities.

This is only part of the picture of women in work and business. Female entrepreneurship, to date, represents a key component of the business sector: in 2019, more than 250 million entrepreneurs worldwide (out of more than 400 million) were women. Countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Panama, Qatar, Madagascar and Angola had no gender disparity in the entrepreneurship landscape (Bosna and Kelley, 2019). There are increasing calls for new directions and dimensions in research on women’s entrepreneurship, for example, to focus on how women ‘do’ entrepreneurship (Ahl, 2006; Yanti, 2018; Marlow et al., 2019).

The research on women’s entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa has taken a very particular angle: as a subsistence and survival strategy. In Video 3.6, Abiola George, PhD Student and MIAG team member, holds up a critical light to this work talking about her experience of researching female tech entrepreneurs in Nigeria.

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Transcript: Video 3.6 Female tech entrepreneurs in Nigeria.

Abiola George:

So an Asian proverb says, ‘Where four or more Nigerian women are gathered, there’s an entrepreneur in their midst.’ But depending on who you look at and what reports that you read, in the Nigerian context, it is estimated that approximately 40% of women are entrepreneurs. And it’s one of the highest rates in the region, and I dare say in the world.

However, the picture starts to shift when you look at what kind of entrepreneurship that the women are engaging with. And that is when you see the divide, with an estimated 80% of the women participating in micro-businesses in the informal sector, which really means they’re not registered. And this runs the gamut from the petty trader to people who might even be running digital businesses but not registered formally. And, again, working with the percentages, only about 20% of these women are in the formal sector.

So the 80%, as I call them, these are the women that we have the most about in development literature, then often the targets of empowerment projects by governments and development actors, people trying to empower them, people trying to elevate their status out of poverty. And this is really important work. I do not in any way cast any shade on that. However, there is also, on the other side, the 20% who are in a skilled – I put ‘skills’, again, in parentheses. And the expression ‘high value’ has also been used again. I’m not comfortable with all these terms, but that’s what’s in the literature, so you permit me to use them.

So they’ve been sort of the more high-value entrepreneurship. And they’re becoming more and more prevalent in the tech sector, which for the longest time has been male-dominated and some people would even say it’s still male-dominated. And these women are essentially innovators.

While the 80% have been the targets of interventions, and funding, and everything, these women on the other hand have struggled to fund their businesses and to raise and to skill. However, they’ve recently been the target of venture capital incubators, accelerators – people seeing the potential in their businesses and trying to then see how they can help the women, but also benefit from these businesses.

And in the Nigeria space for my research, I found these women in finance tech, digitising thrift (which is like the collections that the women have traditionally made for years and years), trying to reach the unbanked with digital savings, mobile money, women-only financial services and hubs as well, where they can come and not just learn how to get finance, but also how to make sure that these finances are being used for the purposes which they are being sourced. Also, I found them in health tech, I found them in tech education from the projects, direct so that – enrolling girls in tech, learning management systems, mentoring and all these other spaces that are listed here.

And this is all quite interesting, because the timeline for some of these businesses emerging, I would say on the outer end, and these are maybe some of the people that they would consider themselves early innovators, about 2013 – but really more around 2015, where the technology hub in Nigeria started to enjoy some growth, started to enjoy attention. However, we found that women’s participation has been lagging, but it seems like it’s in an upward trend.

Now because I came into this as a migration researcher, my lens for looking at these women was from the perspective of the conversations on migration and development. And over the years, the emphasis has shifted from looking at migration as a burden on the host country and as a drain on the home country to how that can be mutually beneficial – things coming out of migration. And so the conversation at some point then started to turn towards entrepreneurship. And really what I would say are the pivotal cases, the Chinese and Indian migrants in Silicon Valley, and they are attributed to setting up and also the success of Silicon Valley. These same migrants are then attributed to being a part of the success of making the technology hubs in their home countries the new space where people could outsource labour.

But the jury is out there, because some people would also say that there were already – the environment was already enabling that sort of activity. And perhaps the impact of these migrants were more to amplify what was already in place and open perhaps to more international attention. It’s cast as these migrant entrepreneurs are bringing knowledge, skills, abilities to home in order to help develop the businesses back home. And so this is the length that I went into my research with.

And so the question that I wanted to query: are diaspora women playing a role in the inclusive development of the tech services sector in Nigeria? And by ‘diaspora women’, I included both secular migrants, transnationals, return migrants and even, in some instances, people that maybe had migrated seasonally for education. Maybe they’ve come to get a masters degree, or first degree, or whatever it is. So I included these women because if all the information online is to be believed – and also what the literature seem to be suggesting, especially again, quoting the Indian and the Chinese example, also coupled with the fact that the technology hub in Nigeria is also developing – looking from the outside, it looked initially like it was all due to these returning women who were maybe different from the women who were back home making all of these innovations and amplifying the sector.

And from what is coming from my research, I would say yes and no. Yes, the diaspora women entrepreneurs seem to be better at, I’ve called it ‘online-ing their profiles’, and tapping into international networks that amplify the work they do. And to give you an example, with some of them, their work, actually, you can track the substance, and for some you can’t track. You can track a really beautiful online profile with membership of the right boards and the right foundations doing empowerment in Nigeria. However, tracking the work on ground is a little bit more difficult, and I found that was prevalent with some of these female entrepreneurs that were being celebrated as the diaspora women coming to shake up the sector and make it more inclusive.

And also on the other hand, I found that, like I said, there was an existing or nascent technology hub starting. So coming in at the beginning of something, it helps to amplify one’s role in it, I guess. But I would say that the way our pre-existing local conditions that are critical to some of these businesses coming from abroad – because I found several notable female entrepreneurs in the Nigerian tech space that have never emigrated out of Nigeria. So migration was not a factor or that I found that was important for them being part of this space that one would say was non-traditional, and that all the conversations seem to suggest.

I would urge caution when it comes to these narratives – the knowledge transfers from abroad. And there’s nothing bad with that, because there’s a lot that has come that is good. But from the perspective of governments and policy-makers and development actors, there is, I feel, in my opinion, that there’s a lot of attention that needs to be paid more to enabling local potential to innovatively solve local problems.

End transcript: Video 3.6 Female tech entrepreneurs in Nigeria.

Video 3.6 Female tech entrepreneurs in Nigeria.

Abiola reiterates some of the conversations you read about in earlier sections: that the study of entrepreneurship to date has been viewed through a male-centric lens. Also, where entrepreneurship and development literatures intersect, emphasis has been on what (in terms of resources, skills or knowledges) can benefit the home country.

It is interesting to note that 40% of women in Nigeria are entrepreneurial, but again we see a limited picture of how this entrepreneurship is understood and empirically researched. Most of these women are working in the informal sector and the language is couched very much in terms of poverty-reduction, which is a narrative replicated across the rest of Africa. These women are entrepreneurial as a livelihood strategy and route out of impoverishment, rather than from a sense of aspiration to develop and improve not just their own lives but what they might bring to the wider growth of an economy and society.

Abiola’s PhD research is deliberately focusing on the 20% of Nigerian women who are not in the informal economy but are skilled – or, to use the popular term she doesn’t like, ‘high-value entrepreneurs’. Her research focused on two types of female entrepreneurs:

• An interesting observation is that she sees a similar finding with the diaspora (Nigerian women returning to the country after periods overseas) to some of the literature that looked at Chinese and Indian migrants in Silicon Valley in the US. These women appear to be spearheading tech sector innovation and development in Nigeria through their business enterprises, tapping into the skills, knowledge and networks that they have gained while abroad.
• However, she cautions against viewing these returnees as the sole vehicles for this growth, because the second group – non-migrating female entrepreneurs – are also significantly contributing to the emergence of the digital tech sector.

The connection between migration and inclusive growth, then, is more complex: Abiola’s findings suggest that we cannot uncritically categorise and bound migrants as an exclusive source of new innovations, skills, etc. that ‘add something different’. This risks perpetuating the perception that migrants are ‘super’, when in fact what we see through Abiola’s research is that some of these innovative and entrepreneurial capacities may already be present in the hosting economies.

When studying migration and IG it is important to understand the gendered dimensions and to look at the complex contexts that women migrants operate in. As our experts discussed in Week 2, migration flows link difference places, so understanding the nuances of these different contexts and how they shape migrants’ activities is important.

Conclusion

This week you have:

• looked at the main debates around entrepreneurship, migration and growth, which, although extensive, have to date suffered from a narrow focus on migrant entrepreneurs in developed countries
• examined understandings of entrepreneurship and what an entrepreneur is, and considered this in relation to what might be particular or different about the African context
• expanded your application of methods in the analysis of the relationship between migration and IG using the MIAG survey data
• looked at the gendered dimensions of migration and growth through the lens of female entrepreneurship.

In the final week, we turn to the practicalities of how this knowledge and evidence can be leveraged to inform more effective migration and development policies.

References