History Of Entrepreneurship Development In Nigeria: Entrepreneurship in Nigeria, Challenges Faced By Entrepreneurs In Nigeria And Technopreneurship

Table Of Contents

  • History Of Entrepreneurship Development In Nigeria
  • Entrepreneurship In Nigeria
  • The Challenges Faced By Entrepreneurs In Nigeria
  • Meaning Of Technopreneurship

History Of Entrepreneurship Development In Nigeria

The term entrepreneur was first introduced early 18th century by French economist Richard Cantillon. He formally defines the entrepreneur as the “agent who buys means of production at certain prices in order to combine them into a new product” (Schumpeter, 1951). Shortly thereafter, the French economist J.B. Say, Added the idea that entrepreneurs had to be leaders. J.B. Say added that an entrepreneur is one who brings other people together in order to build a single production organism.

Over the century, British economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill briefly touched on the concept of entrepreneurship: though they referred to it under broad English term “Business Management” Whereas the writimgs of Smith and Ricardo suggest that they likely undervalued the importance of entrepreneurship, Mill goes out tof his way to stress the significance of entrepreneurship for economic growth. He claims that entrepreneurship requires “no ordinary skill”, and he laments the fact that there is no good Englich equivalent word to encompass the specific meaning of the French term entrepreneur.

As the above discussion demonstrates, throughout the evolution of entrepreneurship theory, different scholars have posited different characteristics that they believ are common among most entrepreneurs. By combining the above disparate theories, a generalized set of entrepreneurship qualities can be developed.

Nigeria has thousands of silent businessmen in the informal sector of the economy, pursuing business interests ranging from the importation of refined crude oil to selling repackaged table water. It is estimated that the information sector account for over 60% of Nigeria’s GDP and represents a source of livelihood for about 70% of Nigerian. These business operators in small sectors are the engine that drives any economics revolution, and Nigerian has no scarcity of them. However, some of these Nigerians have become icons and models for enterprise and business pursuit today through the sheer size and influence of their business dealings. They are from the banking, energy, technology, and telecommunications. Manufacturing and other industry sectors and have distinguished themselves by contextualizing the resources they manage and by contributing to growth of entrepreneurial spirit in Nigeria.

Entrepreneurship In Nigeria

In most countries in Africa, the governments have typically played a significant role in determining enterprises in Africa were created when it was believed that the fastest route to development occured when the sate took on the role of the entrepreneur. Unfortunately, in many countries, the performance of thes state-owned firms, or parastatals, has been substandard. Part of the problem with the state owned enterprise is that they are run by bureaucrats and are plagued with red-tapism.

In Nigeria, the state-owned enterprises traditionally clogged business opportunities and state restriction prevented entrepreneurs from entering the market. However, in the mid-1980s, Nigeria abolished it’s marketing board, which prevented envy into certain industries, and opened it markets to competition from domestic entrepreneurs. Additionally, lower taxes and increased price ceiling have increased the incentive to entrepreneurs. Although Nigerian is still plagued a favorable response by the private sector to the new entrepreneurial opportunities thus crested.

The Challenges Faced By Entrepreneurs In Nigeria

Corruption is something that retard economic growth, and it exists in virtually all economices not necessarily developing economies or indeed Africa-although based on the structures in the more advance countries, they are able to control or to curb these kinds of practices. In Nigeria, the EFCC, which is the economic and financial crime institution set up by the government, has not been able to deal effectively with corruption. But that is not the real constraint that retards entrepreneurship in Nigeria. Research carried out by Lagos Business School (LBS) shows that the following factors tend to weigh down entrepreneurs:

1. The first is “Market”. The majority of our people don’t have access to understand the requirements of the market. So this is one area where we are lacking. For instance, if you want to have access to the U.S. Market, you must know of the market regulations in the USA. Such understanding will assist the entrepreneur to produce to be able to meet the needs of the market. Adequate and timely market information must be provided. Also productions must be competitive and meet required standards.

2. Another major factor is “Infrastructure”. Poor infrastructure has been a major cause of Nigerian populations not being competitive in the international market. Public power supply has been the major constraint to enterprise development. According to a study carried out by the World Bank, if the government is able to remove power as bottleneck, Nigerian will gain at least 30% competitiveness in production.

3. Another important constraint is “Finance”. Access to capital is a major challenges faced by entrepreneurs in Nigeria. The government has tried to do something about this through having one form of intervention or the other. For example some years ago, the Banker’s committee decided to set aside 10% of their profit as equity investments in small businesses, infortunately, the rate at which the money was being dispersed to enterprises has left much to be desired.


The term “technopreneur” arose from within Singaporean culture to describe an individual whose entrepreneurial endeavors focus on a technology centered enterprise. The government of Singapore has embraced technopreneurship and has launched several initiatives to promote technopreneurship as a means of economic development. Singapore had restructed the focus of many of it’s economic policies to fully support the growths and development of domestic technopreneurial firms.

Singapore is a small island city state and has few natural resources that it can exploit in order to promote economic development. Thus Singapore has had to largely rely on its people and human capital for the sustainment of development. Initially, the government improved the country’s human capital by dedicating a large amount of the annual budget to education expenditure. However, now that the country can boast high literacy rates traditional human capital development is no longer sufficient to sustain econonomic growth.

Entrepreneurial in Nigeria in the primitive form was characterized by farming and process of farm products and form produce pottery, blacksmith, animal husbandary etc. Trade was hardly present and where it existed it was by barter.

Modern entrepreneurship in Nigeria started with the coming of colonial masters, who brought in their wars and made Nigerians their middelmen. With time Nigerians began to receive formal education. With formal education, people had the opportunity of being employed in the civil service, necause in those days the economy was large enough to absorb into the prestigious occupation all Nigerians with some form of formal education. With more and more people being educated, it become clear government could no longer employ all school leavers, economic programmes to encourage individuals to go into private business and be self reliant were initiated. Open Apprenticeship Scheme, Graduate Employment programmes etc came to be. And that encouraged entrepreneurs to acquire the needed funds e.g funds for small scale industries (FUSSI), Co-operative Societies etc were established to assist entrepreneurs.

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