Understanding South Africa's Entrepreneurship Environment: Insights from the Existing Literature

Entrepreneurship is widely recognised as a key driver of economic growth, innovation, and employment creation. In South Africa, the National Development Plan (NDP) 2030 emphasises strengthening the entrepreneurship environment by improving access to finance and markets, innovation, infrastructure, enterprise education and skills training, entrepreneurial culture, and easing regulatory constraints. Despite these policy priorities, South Africa continues to face significant challenges in creating an enabling entrepreneurship environment. This paper examines South Africa's entrepreneurship environment focusing on six key determinants that shape entrepreneurial activity: regulatory conditions; market conditions; access to finance; research and development and technology; entrepreneurial capabilities; and cultural factors. While existing studies provide important insights into specific dimensions of South Africa's entrepreneurship ecosystem, there is limited research that synthesises this evidence within a comprehensive conceptual framework. This study adopts a mixed methods approach that integrates qualitative and quantitative evidence. First, it conducts a thematic review of the existing literature organised around the six key entrepreneurial determinants to synthesise insights from previous research within this framework. Second, it analyses the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions data to provide complementary quantitative evidence on South Africa’s entrepreneurship environment. The findings indicate that South Africa's entrepreneurship environment is characterised by multiple interconnected constraints across all six entrepreneurial determinants. As a result, entrepreneurial activity remains relatively low, with many businesses concentrated in the informal economy. The findings also highlight the need for holistic and coordinated interventions to strengthen the country's entrepreneurship ecosystem.