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Entrepreneurial Skills and Industrial Development: The Case of a Car Repair and Metalworking Cluster in Ghana

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Abstract

In sub-Saharan Africa, manufacturers operating in spontaneously developed industrial clusters are very small in size, have low productivity, and, except when they are at a young stage, become stagnant. The literature has related the preponderance of such enterprises to their socioeconomic surroundings. This paper reconsiders the issue by looking at the way small entrepreneurs engage in business in a car repair and metalworking industrial cluster in Ghana. We hypothesize that these entrepreneurs are unaware of or unskilled in basic techniques in marketing, management, and accounting, which are necessary for enterprise growth. Evidence suggests that small entrepreneurs in the cluster are in dire need of such techniques.

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Notes

  1. For information on the metalwork clusters at Kariobangi and Kamukunji, see Sonobe et al. [39] and Kinyanjui [19], respectively. For the leather-shoe cluster in Addis Ababa, see Sonobe et al. [38].

  2. For example, the sample of car mechanics relative to their population is much smaller than that of machinists or manufacturers relative to their population.

  3. Though not shown, the number of young entrepreneurs originally from the outside of the Ashanti Region has been increasing as the cluster has become widely known.

  4. The percentage of workers who are apprentices and the duration of apprenticeship shown in Tables 2 and 3, respectively, are consistent with the data analyzed by Frazer [13].

  5. Variable costs are measured as the sum of costs of materials, labor, subcontracting, and electricity. Producer surplus is sales revenue minus variable cost.

  6. See de Mel et al. [7] for the difficulty in obtaining accurate data from micro enterprises.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Economic Planning Division (EPD), Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Box M40, Accra, Ghana

    Alhassan Iddrisu

  2. Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development (FASID) and National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), 7-22-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 106–8677, Japan

    Yukichi Mano & Tetsushi Sonobe

Authors
  1. Alhassan Iddrisu
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  2. Yukichi Mano
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  3. Tetsushi Sonobe
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Correspondence to Yukichi Mano.

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Iddrisu, A., Mano, Y. & Sonobe, T. Entrepreneurial Skills and Industrial Development: The Case of a Car Repair and Metalworking Cluster in Ghana. J Knowl Econ 3, 302–326 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-011-0047-6

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