Entrepreneurship paradigm in the new millennium: A critique of public policy on entrepreneurship

The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance to African governments by delineating a framework that would help them to formulate policies that have the potential to engender opportunity entrepreneurship. This framework is used to critique existing entrepreneurship policy in Nigeria. Entrepreneurship policy should stimulate economic growth as a necessary condition for employment generation and poverty alleviation.

The paper adopts evaluative methodology. Data and information used in this paper were obtained from several secondary sources. These included literature review related to the subject area addressed; the Central Bank of Nigeria, which has designed and funded various initiatives to enable SMEs access funding for their businesses; the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics which has conducted surveys of SMEs in the country; and the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria, which was established to help promote and develop the SME sub-sector.

The critical findings of the paper are that opportunity entrepreneurship has a better prospect of promoting growth, creating jobs and alleviating poverty than a generic MSME policy being current currently promoted. Targeted entrepreneurship policy to incentivize opportunity-oriented entrepreneurs would produce greater benefit to the economy and society. Such entrepreneurship policy should aim at motivating and facilitating the transitions of necessity entrepreneurs to opportunity entrepreneurship and microenterprises to small and medium enterprises. More importantly, entrepreneurship policy should be targeted at drastically shrinking the informal sector to the barest minimum, while helping to aggressively expand the formal sector, spur innovations, foster growth, expand opportunities and create jobs.

The implication of this paper is the desperate need to refocus public policy on a high-impact entrepreneurship. This calls for a rethinking of existing policy and programs to address their inherent shortcomings.

Existing micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) policy has not achieved the twin goals of job creation and poverty alleviation. This paper contributes to the existing body of work by providing a framework for informed decision-making relative to entrepreneurship policy that has the potential to achieve macroeconomic goals of job creation and poverty alleviation. The framework directs the attention of policymakers to opportunity entrepreneurship as a necessary focus of public policy.