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

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. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2012