Startup Culture’s Relationship with Startup Entrepreneurship in African Entrepreneurship Ecosystems
Because a prosperous Africa requires creative solutions for youth employment.
Sub-Saharan Africa faces a pressing challenge: how to build sustainable, inclusive economies that can keep up with a booming youth population.
Cities across the region are growing fast. Young people are better educated, more connected, and eager to create change. Technology is opening new doors — especially in urban centres, where a wave of startup entrepreneurship has been emerging since the early 2010s.
To support these startups, hundreds of innovation hubs have popped up, often backed by international donors. But what actually works? And how do these support systems shape the people and cultures around them?
Too often, impact is measured only in numbers. This research looks deeper — into the cultural shifts, the community dynamics, and the human side of Africa’s growing startup movement.
Africa is the world’s fastest-growing continent — and with it comes a crucial challenge: how to create meaningful work for millions of young people.
This research explores how startup entrepreneurship can help. Not just by creating jobs, but by building the identity, innovation, and courage founders need to succeed.
Focusing on Lusaka and Windhoek, we studied how startup culture takes root, evolves, and supports early-stage founders — and how it can be shaped to reflect local values and realities.
Because supporting African entrepreneurship isn’t just about tools and training. It’s about trust, belonging, and local ownership — and it matters globally.
First, a couple of key concepts
Startup = a fast-growing company building something innovative in uncertain conditions
In this research, a startup means an early-stage venture still figuring out what works. Startups are often tech-enabled, scalable, and focused on solving problems in new ways. The study focused on these types of ventures in Namibia and Zambia. It demonstrates that the Silicon Valley startups are built in Africa and they are distinct from (Micro,) Small and Medium-sized Enterprises or the informal markets.
Entrepreneurship Ecosystem = the full environment that supports (or blocks) entrepreneurs
An entrepreneurship ecosystem includes everything that helps or hinders people starting businesses: funding, policies, education, culture, infrastructure, and networks. This research looked at the wider ecosystems in Windhoek and Lusaka to understand what conditions shape entrepreneurship — from social trust to policy gaps.
Startup Ecosystem = the people and places helping startups succeed
The research discovered that there is a distinct sub-group in the broader entrepreneurship ecosystem, a startup ecosystem. It includes founders, hubs, mentors, events, training programmes and investors — the tight-knit network focused on growing new, innovative companies. This is where startup culture lives and breathes — a space full of ambition, support, and experimentation.
What this research set out to do
Build a framework for Startup Culture grounded in real-world experiences in African ecosystems.
Understand the link between startup culture and early-stage entrepreneurship — what helps founders get started and keep going.
Explore how global methods travel, by tracing how a Northern-born, design-based startup approach is adapted in African contexts.
Enable entrepreneurship support hubs (ESOs) design better programmes to new founders (and understand their qualitative value)
Guide policymakers at local and national levels in strengthening entrepreneurship ecosystems in southern Africa.
Support donors and international partners to fund initiatives that are culturally grounded and locally owned.
Research Questions
The research question is: What is the relationship between startup culture and early-stage startup entrepreneurship in southern African entrepreneurship ecosystems?
This primary research question is explored through sub-questions regarding three different levels and contexts.
How is startup culture perceived, constructed and domesticated by startup founders and ecosystem actors within:
an entrepreneurship ecosystem?
an ESO?
a training programme?
Prefer to listen to the research in podcast form?
This AI-generated podcast episode was created using Google NotebookLM and is based on selected chapters of my doctoral dissertation — including the Introduction, Case Studies, Analysis, Discussion, and Conclusions. I’ve skipped the heavier academic content from the Literature Review and Methodology to keep things digestible. Note: the cover page used to create the podcast still had my maiden name (Evokari).
While the episode may include a few small inaccuracies, it offers a good overview of the work. Tune in with a curious and critical mind — just like any thoughtful researcher would.
Theory and Methodology
This research sits at the crossroads of entrepreneurship, culture and design - more specifically early-stage entrepreneurship, the domestication of global practices, and design thinking. Using the lens of Design Anthropology, it draws on ethnographic and Participatory Action Research methods across three studies — each unpacking a different layer of startup culture.
Rather than offering an outsider’s quick snapshot, this work amplifies the voices of local founders and ecosystem builders. Through dialogue, immersion, and collaboration, the research interprets how those most embedded in these ecosystems make sense of startup culture — shining a light on their lived experiences, values, and everyday practices.
Study 1: Startup Culture on the Ecosystem Level
Thematic analysis of qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with startup actors in Windhoek, Namibia (Aug 2021-Jan 2022), and mapping findings using Hofstede’s model for Manifestations of Culture.
Study 2: Startup Culture on the ESO level
Study 2 narrows the focus from an ecosystem level to an organisational level, and analyses how an innovation hub perceives, constructs and domesticates Startup Culture through its entrepreneurship support initiatives. The focus is on a Women in Tech incubator run by Lusaka’s leading ESO, BongoHive. This study is based on the data collected in April 2021-Jan 2022) through participant observation, interviews and focus groups with startup founders, their trainers and ecosystem actors.
Study 3: Startup Culture on the Training Programme Level
Study 3 analyses Startup Culture on a training programme level as it explores the construction and domestication of the cultural phenomenon in an online training programme for female founders. The study is conducted in partnership with Future Females and its Business School organised in Namibia in September-December 2021. A participant action research experiment outlines how Startup Culture transfers and is domesticated through design-based methods used in startup support. The experiment of using Lean Service Creation, a Northern-designed toolkit developed by Futurice (FIN), is co-designed with expert partners who pilot its use with Namibian founders.
Collaboration and Industry Partnerships
Close collaboration with local hubs ensured the research was culturally grounded and relevant. Partnerships were formed with key ecosystem players who supported local access, insight, and co-creation:
Future Females (Namibia)
Future Females is a movement to inspire more female entrepreneurs, and better support their success.
BongoHive (Zambia)
BongoHive is Zambia’s first technology and innovation hub. They work with great minds building viable solutions that change the world.
Futurice (Finland)
An industry partnership with Finnish innovation company Futurice brought a practical, open-source tool into the research — Lean Service Creation — co-applied with local experts. Originally designed for digital startup development, testing it in new cultural contexts revealed how such tools can be adapted and meaningfully transferred across ecosystems.
Futurice helps customers unleash innovation through digital product design and build, emerging technology, agile software development and lean organisational change.
Embedded in the ecosystem with Turipamwe (Namibia)
The research was supported by Turipamwe, a Namibian creative agency. Our collaboration on developing a local innovation agency allowed Turipamwe to host my work permits, making it possible for me to remain immersed in the context beyond the formal fieldwork period and partner on other value-adding work such as the Omeho Project and the White Paper on Design Thinking in Namibia — deepening the relevance, trust, and insight of the research. The dissertation’s graphic design is by Turipamwe (Dudley Minnie and Tanya Stroh).
Want to talk about the findings? Get in touch.
The PhD Program, the University and the the Giants’ Shoulders I Stand On
I earned my Doctorate in Design Innovation at the Institute for Creative Futures (previously Institute for Design Innovation) at Loughborough University London, a Top 5 UK University. The programme combined academic rigour with immersive international fieldwork, resulting in over 100 qualitative data points. I passed my viva with minor corrections in February 2025, received my award letter in November, and will officially graduate in December 2025.
This work was made possible thanks to the guidance of Professor Mikko Koria and Dr Ida Telalbasic (Institute for Creative Futures) with valuable contributions from my reviewers Dr Kun Fu, Professor Toni-Matti Karjalainen and Dr Henri Koskinen. I was also supported throughout by my PhD coach, Dr Anna Haverinen (2021-2025).
Funding
This research was generously supported by two Finnish foundations. I received a competitive multi-year study grant (2019-2024) from the Liikesivistysrahasto (Foundation for Economic Education) which supports research and education in business and economics. In addition, I was awarded a travel grant from Hans Bang Stiftelsen (2020).
I’m deeply grateful for the support of both foundations in making this doctoral journey possible.
