Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experience of Qatar with entrepreneurship education and training, and its contribution in creating a knowledge-based economy. By doing so, the paper will contribute towards raising awareness about the state of entrepreneurship education, training and the knowledge economy in Qatar.

The research design for this paper is a descriptive and interpretive case study that is analysed through qualitative methods. Secondary information is analysed through descriptive statistics.

The main finding of this paper is that although Qatar has launched many initiatives of entrepreneurship education and training to help diversify its economy by creating knowledge-based economy, the data show that there is some improvement in Qatar’s ranking in the Knowledge Economy Index.

The main limitation of this study is the unavailability of secondary data for a long period of time.

The main policy implication that can be derived from the findings of this paper is that entrepreneurship education and training alone cannot create a diversified and knowledge-based economy in a short period of time. In fact building a knowledge economy requires more than introduction of entrepreneurship education and training. In addition to entrepreneurship education it requires improvement in the national innovation system, large investment in information and communication technology and a good macroeconomic performance. Moreover, the success of entrepreneurship education and training in fulfilling its objective requires a comprehensive strategy to be implemented over a long period of time.

The paper represents an original work that links entrepreneurship education and training with the knowledge economy. This is the first paper that handles this issue in the context of Gulf countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of governance indicators (political stability, control of corruption, rule of law, regularity quality, voice and accountability and government effectiveness) on foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to African countries.

The authors employed a panel regression model on data from 50 African countries for the period 1996 to 2010. The empirical analysis uses the fixed and random effects estimation.

The results obtained through fixed and random effects indicate that out of the six World Bank's governance indicators, three are statistically significant. These are voice and accountability, government effectiveness and rule of law. This result implies that to improve their investment climate and increase the inflow of FDI, African countries need to improve the state of governance.

The major limitation of this paper is the absence of different sources for governance indicators, and absence of long time series data on some other governance indicators such as transparency.

These results lead to the conclusion that some governance indicators are very important for foreign investors in their investment decisions, while other indicators are not. Governments have to consider these indicators while trying to attract foreign investment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how potential entrepreneurs perceived the entrepreneurial environment in Sudan.

It evaluates economic, political, legal and administrative, socio‐cultural, educational, and infrastructure and public support conditions affecting entrepreneurship development. Furthermore, it examines attitudes of government, Sudanese society, and Sudanese business community towards enhancement of entrepreneurial environment. Data are collected from 236 national potential entrepreneurs through questionnaires. Respondents are asked 45 questions to assess their perception of the main six factors composing the entrepreneurial environment.

The study revealed that the entrepreneurs perceived economic, education and infrastructure conditions as fair (neither strong nor poor). However, they perceived political, legal, administrative, social and cultural conditions as poor. Factors that contributed in shaping these conditions are government policies, and social and cultural beliefs of Sudanese society.

The study is the first contribution to the literature on the Sudan entrepreneurship environment.