Entrepreneurship Development Programmes and Business Performance Outcomes among Emerging Enterprises in Zambia

Entrepreneurship development is key to driving enterprise growth and development, to create employment and foster innovation and overall economic development especially in developing economies with majority of economies being based on small to medium enterprises. Emerging enterprises in Zambia are confronted with challenges associated with lack of finance, lack of managerial skills, lack of entrepreneurial skills, poor infrastructure and market challenges. Institutions involved in development of entrepreneurship are key in equipping individuals with skills to be successful entrepreneurs by providing training, mentorship, innovations and incubation of enterprises (Mwamba et al., 2022). The study specifically examined the impact that entrepreneurship development programmes are likely to have on the performance of the emerging businesses in Zambia using BongoHive as the case study. BongoHive is among the organisations that are spearheading entrepreneurship development support in Zambia, as BongoHive offers a multitude of programmes and services under its innovation incubation, mentorship, enterprise development, and entrepreneurship training platforms. Thus, the specific business performance indicators of emerging businesses include measurement of their profitability, sustainability, their ability to innovate, ability to expand their markets, and to enhance their competitiveness in the long run. The study adopted a quantitative explanatory research design, relying on a primary data source in the form of a questionnaire that was administered to a sample of emerging and young enterprises that had participated in various entrepreneurship programmes at BongoHive. The data was analysed for purposes of describing and comparing key variables and, more importantly, for ascertaining the relationships that existed between key variables of entrepreneurship development programmes and key indicators of business performance. Using Human Capital Theory, the study analysed how investing in knowledge and in skills for entrepreneurship could increase productivity.