Author(s): Raymond Mgcineni Mcunukelwa, Samson N Asoba and Nteboheng Mefi
Worldwide, entrepreneurship is recognised as essential for the economic growth of a country. In South Africa, the government has initiated several policies and initiatives for the growth of entrepreneurship. Despite these initiatives, the failure rate of small businesses remains high and there is widespread recognition that more need to be done to boost entrepreneurship in the country. The present study was formulated to offer a new approach to accelerate entrepreneurship in the countries. The aim of the study was to offer a comparative advantage based approach for the growth of entrepreneurship in the South African context. A document analysis technique was used to explore the nature of competitive advantages in South Africa’s nine provinces. After exploring the comparative advantages inherent in these provinces, it then reviewed the capacity of local government to take advantage of these advantages for the purposes of growing local entrepreneurship and improve residents’ lives. The study found that South Africa has different comparative advantages and the local governments possess certain operational elements for the exploitation of local advantages. Even though the Gauteng Province was found to have significant technological, demand pattern and commercial policy advantages than other provinces, every province had its own advantage elements which can be the basis for entrepreneurship. Local governments achievements in service delivery, citizen participation, accountability, reduction of corruption and skills development can be useful in realising the comparative advantage based entrepreneurship approach that was proposed in this study.