¡§Half of the world¡¦s population is female;¡¨ ¡§Educating a man means educating an individual however, educating a woman equals educating the whole nation.¡¨ These common sayings underscore the critical roles women play in society. In sub-Saharan Africa, women are known to play crucial roles in difficult times such as wars and natural disasters. In economic crises, when children are at risk of malnourishment and many men lose their main sources of income, they tend to turn towards their wives and/or mothers for support. Therefore, the empowerment of women - by giving them the opportunity to start a business - goes beyond the intrinsic value this has for the women themselves. Such empowerment may have profound impacts on families, communities, and national economies. The aim of this research is to study female entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on Burkina Faso, which is a region of the world where female entrepreneurship has been increasing in recent years. Traditionally a male-dominated area with narrowly prescribed gender roles, entrepreneurship is becoming the domain of choice for an increasing number of women. What are the deep motivations of these women? What are their social and demographic characteristics? What are the main issues they are facing? The empirical study was conducted on a sample of 45 female entrepreneurs. Therefore, a self-administered questionnaire of 35 questions with 32 closed questions was used to measure the female entrepreneurs¡¦ profile in terms of characteristics, motivations, and difficulties encountered. The results indicated that the female entrepreneur in Burkina Faso is usually a young and married woman (30-39 years old) whose area of business evolves around commerce, hairdressing, decorations, seam stressing, and dyestuffs, activities that are similar to those women generally performed at home. Psychologically, the female entrepreneur possesses a strong internal locus of control concerning the success or failure of her business venturing. In fact, she believes that she is artisan of her own destiny, and usually does not associate the success or failure of her firm to destiny and chance. Concerning the motives, women are primarily motivated by the need for economic independence, the need to make a living, the need for self-accomplishment and self-realization. The study also indicated that the difficulties faced by these women are mainly financial, and then comes the difficulty to have access to adequate equipment.

Innovation hub organizations - or 'hubs' - have become a prevalent form of support for technology entrepreneurship in Africa. About 170 African hubs have been established, most since 2010. Practitioners have argued either that hubs are transformative network infra-structures for Africa's fledgling digital economy or that they are ineffective business incubators. This thesis steps back from this debate about whether hubs work. Instead, it asks how African hubs work, specifically how they shape relationships of technology entrepreneurs. Literature on intermediation and incubation is reviewed to establish a theoretical framework. The thesis then tests and extends the framework based on an extensive, grounded empirical inquiry. In-depth case study data (including 119 interviews with 133 participants) on six hubs were collected during field studies in Kigali, Harare, and Accra from September-December 2014. The thesis finds that the analyzed hub organizations were defined by nested, fluidly bounded entrepreneurial communities. Communities varied by their level of activation: mem-bers of active communities had concern for each other and recognized communities as social entities, while inactive community members only shared a loose purpose. The six hubs followed two distinct organizational patterns: the technology hub (depending on active core communities) and the entrepreneurship hub (relying on active peripheral communities). Based on these results, the thesis theorizes hubs as assemblers of technology entrepreneurs: hubs assemble previously distant and different actors into entrepreneurial communities. Assembly is unique to hubs: it is related to but different from incubation and most forms of intermediation. Assembly theory addresses important meso-level analytical gaps in prior research on the coordination and organization of entrepreneurship. The thesis underscores limitations in African technology entrepreneurship environments, advising hub practitioners to acknowledge that 'only what is there can be assembled.' Ultimately, it highlights that hubs have been critically misunderstood, and clarifies what hubs can and cannot do for technology entrepreneurs.