Abstract
The chapter is intended to share the author's experience with social enterprise and start-ups gained in the developing countries of Africa. Relying on her ample professional practice, the author believes that many a good idea can be translated into a successful social enterprise project. The chapter will therefore provide an example of good practice. Supported by an already accomplished qualitative research and many years of relevant practice, the author argues that social enterprise and start-up may lay the groundwork for social recognition, self-determination and improved living generally. The persons involved in such enterprise will also enhance their social status and become fully or partially independent of foreign developmental assistance.
TopBackground
Developmental cooperation is typically perceived as an effective tool of facilitating and expediting economic growth and advancement in developing countries. Not a few authors (and even more politicians) also believe that the growth cannot be achieved without an intervention from outside. Professionals, however, are unable to agree on whether or not such intervention effectively prepares ground and creates conditions favorable for faster development.
Developmental cooperation should be understood as a possible way from economic stagnation to self-reliant economic growth, i.e. not primarily as a means of increasing the standard of living in developing countries. The effort is motivated mainly by the prospect of achieving this desirable result in the recipient country.
By common consensus recently achieved, the Official Development Assistance (ODA) should turn from governments towards the private sector, now considered to be the chief engine of freedom and democracy established through an organized economic activity. Unfortunately, instead of promoting investments and encouraging the private sector, ODA tends to suppress private investments. Easterly (2010) expressed the opinion that sub-Saharan Africa cannot develop without the direct involvement of African private sector and private businessmen, without African political reformers and active civil society, and that it cannot depend on the “ineffective, bureaucratic and often ill-informed western society”.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Start up: A startup or start up is a company or project initiated by an entrepreneur to seek, effectively develop, and validate a scalable business model.
NGO: Non-profit non-governmental organization which that was not founded for profit.
Development Cooperation: the term which is used, for example, by the World Health Organization (WHO), is used to express the idea that a partnership should exist between donor and recipient, rather than the traditional situation in which the relationship was dominated by the wealth and specialised knowledge of one side.
Developing Country: is a country with a less developed industrial base and a low Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries.
Social Enterprise: It is a subject of social economy. Its business is created to further a social purpose in a financially sustainable way.
Social Entrepreneurship: Social entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship thriving society and the environment.
Social Economy: the Social Economy Charter, which defined the social economy asa group of non-governmental organizations, democratic and with a special income redistribution regime for the purposes of their further development and improvement for their members and for society.
Employee oriented innovations: A pure innovation whose added value contributes to a better life for employees in enterprise.