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Entrepreneurial Ecosystems Best Practices and Lessons amongst SMEs in BRICS Member Countries: A Systematic Literature Review
No full textThe Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector is the backbone of the economy in various countries, and several challenges have hindered its growth. The sharp decline of participants in the SME sector across BRICS countries indicates the difficulties besetting the industry. This study explores the entrepreneurial ecosystems within BRICS nations, emphasizing that regulatory frameworks, policies, and legislation are pivotal factors contributing to the stagnation and decline of SMEs, especially in developing contexts. While governments aim to stimulate growth for the SME sector, on one end, the very SMEs are suffocating with compliance issues, labor laws, tax-related matters, and municipal bylaws, among others. This paper presents the main findings from qualitative research mapping the BRICS entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE). The analysis is underpinned by the six elements of EE developed by Daniel Isenberg: the regulatory framework, market conditions, access to finance, policy, Human capital, and an enabling culture. The study gathered qualitative data from secondary sources and interrogated existing policies on the above-mentioned determinants. Publications from Scopus, Web of Science, OECD reports, and government websites were used to source information using keyword searches. A notable decline in SME participation across BRICS countries underscores the difficulties faced. Barlow and Panton identify regulatory compliance burdens as a primary obstacle for SMEs, leading to higher operational costs and reduced competitiveness. Similarly, the World Bank\u27s "Doing Business" report highlights that complex tax regulations and labor laws disproportionately affect smaller enterprises, often stifling their growth potential. This paper presents findings derived from a qualitative research mapping of the BRICS entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE), Grounded in Daniel Isenberg’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, this paper based its findings on qualitative data obtained from BRICS countries. Using targeted keyword searches, data was gathered from secondary sources, including Scopus, Web of Science, OECD reports, and government websites. The analysis reveals that while governments aim to stimulate SME growth, many inadvertently impose compliance issues that suffocate these enterprises. The study recommends that governments review restrictive regulations and implement initiatives to enhance SME performance, ultimately contributing to broader economic growth. By addressing these regulatory challenges, a more vibrant and resilient SME sector can emerge, capable of driving innovation and job creation
Transport justice for students: Transport crisis and some suggestions
Get PDFUnsafe, costly, and unreliable travel is a significant issue for students from working-class and poor communities. Among the consequences are missed classes, late arrivals, and dropouts from university. This article examines the challenges faced by female students in Johannesburg and Bellville (near Cape Town), where local universities predominantly serve students from working-class communities. Public transport articles rarely address the experiences of young women who are students of the university education system in South Africa. The article suggests ways to improve the transportation conditions for these students based on in-depth interviews conducted in 2021 and 2022 and secondary sources. The findings reveal that women not only feel unsafe in their communities and homes but also when using different modes of transport to travel to and from the universities. The article concludeswith suggestions and proposals to enhance the transportation conditions for women from working class communities in higher education
The Lost Prince of the ANC: The Life and Times of Jabulani Nobleman ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo 1955-1991
Get PDF“Marx has become a functional, philosophical, ancestral mentor-surrogate for intellectuals either ignorant of, or simply deprived of, their own philosophical lineages — they are intellectual orphans” (Ayi Kwei Armah in Masks and Marx: The Marxist Ethos vis-à-vis African Revolutionary Theory and Praxis 1984)
The Significance of the African Development Bank on the Occasion of Its recent Presidential Election
Get PDFOn 29 May, marking the end of the Africa month, and at the conclusion of its meeting on ‘“Making Africa’s Capital Work Better for Africa’s Development”, the African Development Bank elected Sidi Ould Tah of Mauritania as its president.Tah faces a mammoth task to deliver now an agenda that is old but remains elusive.
“I didn’t know I could use my music for others”: Community Music as Transformative Education at a South African University
Get PDFIn response to South African higher education’s transformation agenda, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) introduced community music (CM) as a BMus degree subject in 2012. In this article I examine the potential of CM to realise community engagement (CE) within higher education transformation policy mandates. From my perspective as researcher-practitioner, I consider CM as a curriculum transformation; its impact on student learning, and how CM transforms their musicianship to enhance the music degree. Using data from students’ reflective essays, students’ applied drama-facilitated reflections, and focus groups, I describe students’ transformative learning in the Wits CM courses, focusing on their service-learning (SL) experiences and reflections, over the past eight years. The findings suggest that CM re-orientates South African music curricula towards social engagement and artistic citizenship. I argue that integrating CM in the academy constitutes transformative education that changes students’ ways of knowing, learning, and being, and in so doing, develops critically aware, responsible citizens who can use their musicianship to benefit others. The research offers a model of CM in a South African university that speaks to higher education CE, and which is intended to highlight the significance of CM in the academy more broadly
On Shaping South African Society: Whistleblowing as a Forerunner
Get PDFThe De-centre: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies offers a commentary section, with a call for this section having the slogan: “A space for critical commentary on issues shaping societies’ present and future”. When I received this call, the slogan elicited particular interest for me, and it is with this slogan that I considered my own research – that is, the impact that the phenomenon of whistleblowing has on shaping society.
I understand whistleblowing as a social phenomenon that occurs when an insider discloses a wrongdoing to an authority that they believe would be able to remedy that wrongdoing, and this understanding is largely informed by Janet Near and Marcia Miceli’s (1985) seminal work. It is widely accepted that United States lawyer, journalist and civil activist Ralph Nader employed, in 1971, the “first formal use of the term “whistleblower” to denote insiders who expose organizational wrongdoing” (Uys, 2022: 26). Nader, in fact, put the term to use in order to avoid common derogatory vocabulary such as ‘snitch’ and ‘informer’. Yet, the history of ‘blowing the whistle’ dates back to well before that. In South Africa, Adam Tas and Emily Hobhouse can be considered two early whistleblowers
The Fraught Terrain of Decolonization/Decoloniality in India
Get PDFThe project of decolonization/ decoloniality in the Indian context is particularly fraught because the ruling proto-fascist party and its parent and kindred organizations routinely indulge in decolonization-talk, positing a simple West versus Indian binary, where ‘Indian’ is defined in elitist Brahmanical and homogenous terms. On the other hand, intellectuals and leaders of the historically most oppressed section of Hindu society – the untouchables –have from the late 19th century onwards, found British colonial presence and the modern discourse of equality and rights liberating. This division has become more exacerbated in recent years since the Hindu Right came to power in 2014. The crucial point that is missed is that the Hindu Right is, in fact, constituted by colonial knowledge in at least two ways. (i) The ‘Hinduism’ that they espouse is a 19th century invention (through the mediation of Orientalist scholarship and colonial institutions of historical and archaeological research) and formalized as a category by British censuses. (ii) Its entire political imaginary is predicated upon the European ideas of nation, nationalism and nation-statism. Indeed, its entire imagination of the Indian past is based on mimicking the European and the irrepressible desire (common among nationalists of other hues as well) to prove that everything that India too had, in the remote past, what defines Europe in modern times. Its decolonization is therefore about proving India’s past greatness in European terms, completely obliterating in the process the counter-traditions that were rapidly marginalized through the collusion and colonialism and nationalism
Double Critique Revisited, Or Does It Matter Who is the Most Legitimate Victim?
Get PDFThe full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has accentuated the parallel existence of discordant and impervious narratives – the global anticolonial and the more local anti-Soviet/Russian. Caught up in their victimhood rivalry, both narratives demonstrate their inability to engage in pluriversal thinking and be ready to sacrifice their privileges, real or symbolic. The invasion has also shown the poverty ofthe global theory that continues to flounder in the swamp of emasculated universalism or to grab on to the provincial and ignorant ”stand pointism” unable to practice solidarity with anyone and for anything. These are disturbing signs of a surrender to modern/colonial futureless agonistics that seeks to spite the enemy rather than to generate anything constructive. In its early years decolonial option stressed the importance of double critique. Today the double critique often shrinks to a one-sided rejection of the straw-manned collective west, while decolonial thinkers too easily pardon dictators and rogue states who manipulatively use their anti-Western rhetoric. Paradoxically, this bias reproduces the same modern/colonial paradigm which decoloniality claims to delink from while dismissing Ukrainians as mere victims or dispensable lives. The essay analyzes the reasons for this current dangerous binarization in decolonial thinking and reflects on possible ways for revamping the complexity of the double critique and hopefully, for reimagining decoloniality in the 21st century
A cave with agency: Ochre, blood and women at Keurbos 4
Get PDFKeurbos 4 is a located on the Rondegat River in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Rich in painted imagery, it is distinctive for several reasons. Its morphology and position atop a steep incline offer views from inside looking out, but not outside looking in, and afford a level of inaccessibility and seclusion. Within the cave, the rockface is pigmented by a prominent geologically formed red smear and, whilst having little by way of Later Stone Age domestic content, has a notable painted assemblage. The assemblage is predominated by female figures, particularly rows of splayed-legged, squatting or crouching figures shown in the front-facing perspective with one arm extended towards the groin. Alongside these squatting women are an elephant herd, and a series of parallel vertical lines of geologically formed and applied ochreous pigment. Given the location, morphology, geology, and painted contents of the site, we suggest that Keurbos 4 was a place chosen by women for women in the context of ritual and didactic events. Further, we believe the transformation of the space into this place is accompanied by an invoking of agency from the cave, which was far from a passive accident and much more an active participant
French Operation Barkhane: A Litmus Test for EU-AU Security Cooperation
Get PDFThe establishment of French Operation Barkhane is pivotal in addressing counterterrorism and the restoration of stability within the Sahel region. This military initiative represents a collective intervention that encompasses both France and the G5 Sahel states, operating through four military bases under French command. Various scholarly analyses perceive this operation as a deviation from France’s traditional military policy in Africa; however, its conduct is indicative of a continued reinforcement of French imperial interests on the continent. This study aligns with existing literature, positing that Operation Barkhane is fundamentally a military intervention shaped by the dynamics of Francafrique policy, which appears to marginalize the EU-AU Peace and Security framework. The French military operation failed to