The Nigerian Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Understanding its Leverage and Exploits

Abstract:

Despite the potential in entrepreneurship to drive economic growth and job creation, there exist some systematic barriers that hinder startup development and scalability, resulting from limited interactions among the components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This study examines the persistent challenges constraining Nigeria’s entrepreneurial ecosystem in Nigeria. Through a rigorous desk review methodology analyzing secondary data from peer-reviewed journals (2019-2024), government reports (CBN, SMEDAN), and global databases (World Bank, NBS), this research proposed a tripartite framework identifying three interdependent ecosystem components: actors (entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers), factors (institutional frameworks, infrastructure, financing), and support systems (incubators, networks). This proposed novel tripartite framework is built on the existing literature by considering and harvesting all the scattered perspectives on the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The study reveals critical challenges incl