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The purpose of this paper is answer the research question to what extent Ethiopian universities can be considered to be entrepreneurial and explains possible differences among these universities.

The paper is inspired by a mixed methods study at nine universities in Ethiopia applying the entrepreneurial university framework of the European Commission/OECD: a content analysis of university policy and educational documents, a structured survey with 203 respondents, in particular staff and students, and in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with 223 people comprising university top-management, faculty, students and external stakeholders.

Findings indicate that entrepreneurial activities in Ethiopian universities are at their infant stage with limited differences among the universities. The universities are operating in a top-down, central governmental-led development that is not enabling entrepreneurial behaviour at the level of the individual institutions. The paper argues that within this context, leadership is the lever for an entrepreneurial turn at the universities.

Entrepreneurship development is a priority in many African countries as an instrument for employability of the predominant young populations towards which universities are expected to contribute considerably. The study highlights the tension between a strong say of the government in university operations and creating an autonomous, integrated entrepreneurial culture.

The results of this study have relevance for the higher education community in terms of understanding the complexity of transforming institutions into more entrepreneurial organisations in Africa. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no previous study that examines entrepreneurial characteristics of several universities in Ethiopia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial intentions of undergraduate university students in Ethiopia by making a comparative analysis among different groups of students.

A total of 156 students completed entrepreneurship intention questionnaire. The questionnaire has seven parts extracting information about personal attraction, subjective norm, self‐efficacy, entrepreneurial intention, need for achievement, locus of control, and instrumental readiness. The respondents were asked to state their agreement/disagreement on statements on a seven‐point Likert type scale.

The result identified that students who had undergone entrepreneurship education (business management student in this case) tend to have better entrepreneurial intention than those who had not taken entrepreneurship course (engineering students). Also, it was observed that male management students have higher personal attraction towards entrepreneurial career, subjective norms, self‐efficacy and achievement need than female management students, as well as male and female engineering students, while female management students have the lowest instrumental readiness than students in other groups. The study did not find significant difference in entrepreneurial intention of students who had exposure to entrepreneurial activity through family and those who had no such exposures.

The limitation of this research lies in the sample size and the study units (universities) from which samples have been taken. Future research is recommended to predict entrepreneurship intention of students by taking larger sample from more universities in the country.

The study strongly suggests the need to incorporate entrepreneurship education in the curriculum of technical disciplines in Ethiopian universities.

The research provides assessment of entrepreneurship intention of university students in the country/culture which was not explored in the past and hence it further enriches literature and helps to universalize intention theories.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and evaluate entrepreneurship education in public universities in Ethiopia.

The study is based on the data obtained from 16 public universities in the country. The undergraduate curriculum of each university was examined to understand the departments in which entrepreneurship course(s) is/are offered. The syllabus for entrepreneurship course was examined to understand the focus areas and objectives of the entrepreneurship education. A questionnaire based on the literature was used to gather information about the background of entrepreneurship instructors, the teaching and evaluation methods employed in entrepreneurship courses.

The results show that entrepreneurship education is in its early phase of development in Ethiopian public universities. Entrepreneurship education was mainly offered in business schools and agricultural colleges, though recently it started to be included in the curricula of other schools too, mainly technology institutes/colleges. Traditional teaching and evaluation methods are dominant in teaching and assessing entrepreneurship courses in Ethiopian universities. Ethiopian public universities are also characterized by a dearth of entrepreneurship promotion centers.

The study is based on the analysis of curricula and course syllabi and the evaluation of academic staff involved in teaching of entrepreneurship. The study would have been more complete had it included the perception of students.

The findings suggest the need for incorporating entrepreneurship education in all disciplines and the need to further improve the teaching and evaluation methods utilized in the courses. The findings also suggest the need to enhance the capacity of academic staff involved in teaching entrepreneurship.

The paper is the first to examine the state of entrepreneurship education in Ethiopian public universities in a detailed way.