Female entrepreneurship in Africa: a review, trends, and future research directions

There has been a significant increase in scholarly literature about female entrepreneurship in Africa. In order to take stock of the state of female entrepreneurship on that continent, this paper examines articles published in peer-reviewed journals over the period 1987 to 2019. Using a mixed embeddedness approach, the analysis of these articles shows how cultural, institutional, economic, political, and social contexts shape the resources and strategies used by female entrepreneurs, and in turn, the interactions between the contexts, resources, and strategies determine the outcomes of female entrepreneurship in Africa. We argue that the environments in which female entrepreneurs are embedded lead to the development of innovative strategies and ways of gaining access to diverse resources. More papers on female entrepreneurship in Africa were published between 2015 and 2019 than in the previous 27 years. A comprehensive analysis of the articles sampled for this systematic literature review has led to the development of new insights and opportunities for future research