Social entrepreneurship in Africa: A systematic multilevel literature review

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a systematic multi-level literature review of research on social entrepreneurship in Africa. Our review focuses on work from the last decade, since the first issue of the Africa Journal of Management was published, and the widely cited Academy of Management Perspectives paper “Social entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa” by Rivera-Santos et al (2015). Through analysis of 128 papers in 35 journals, patterns in research on social entrepreneurship in Africa are revealed and critically discussed, including insights on the field’s growth, where work is being published, who is writing it, and the role of African based scholars. Saebi et al's (2019) multilevel multistage social entrepreneurship framework is also used to classify existing work, and critically identify those aspects of the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship in Africa that have received more and less attention. Finally, these analyses are synthesized to identify opportunities for future scholarship.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Littlewood, D. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8994-1293 Ciambotti, G. Sottini, A.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2025 The Authors. Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in Africa Journal of Management is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2025 The Author(s). Co-published by NISC Pty (Ltd) and Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Keywords:	Social entrepreneurship; Africa; Systematic literature review; Multilevel; Multistage
Dates:	Accepted: 11 September 2025 Published (online): 21 November 2025 Published: 21 November 2025
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield)
Date Deposited:	19 Sep 2025 10:18
Last Modified:	02 Dec 2025 17:38
Status:	Published online
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis Group
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1080/23322373.2025.2574206
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:231890

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Social entrepreneurship in Africa: A systematic multilevel literature review

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