Search results

Michael Payne made his name by developing the first global marketing strategy, the TOP Programme, for the International Olympic Committee. In 1988 he became the organisation's first ever marketing director. In 2002 he took up the new post of director of Olympic global broadcast and new media rights. During his career at the IOC he oversaw the marketing of 15 Olympic Summer and Winter Games. He has been nominated as one of the world's most influential marketers by Advertising Age and has recently written the book Olympic Turnaround, the story of how the Olympics was saved. In 2005 he became special adviser to Bernie Ecclestone, with a brief to help develop commercial opportunities in Formula One.

Context matters in social entrepreneurship, and it matters a lot. Social entrepreneurs are deeply entrenched in the context where they operate: they respond to its challenges, are shaped by it, and attempt to shape it in turn. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how social entrepreneurship in Africa is still understood within the scope of Western theories, without much consideration for local variations of the commonly shared archetype of social entrepreneurship or for how African norms, values and beliefs may shape our common understanding of this phenomenon.

The authors survey the often-neglected literature on social entrepreneurship in Africa and bring it together in this paper to discuss – also from the vantage point of their own experience and research in diverse African countries – how important assumptions in the social entrepreneurship literature are confirmed, enriched or challenged by key dimensions of African contexts.

Four important themes in the literature on social entrepreneurship in Africa emerged – institutions, embedding values, entrepreneurial behaviour and bricolage and scaling impact – each with its own considerations of how African contexts may challenge predominant assumptions in the extant social entrepreneurship literature, as well as implications for future research.

The authors uncover ways in which the peculiarities of the African context may challenge the underlying – and mostly implicit – assumptions that have shaped the definition and analysis of social entrepreneurship. They end by offering their understanding of social entrepreneurship and its concomitant dimensions in Africa as a stepping stone for advancing the field in the continent and beyond.