海角大神

The start-up world is getting a lot bigger: Silicon Valley now has from places like Singapore, Sao Paulo, and Tel Aviv.

Will its rivals soon include聽Lagos, Cape Town, or any number of fast-growing African cities?

Yes, says聽, a professor in the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.聽鈥淭here鈥檚 a demographic time bomb in the aging Western world,鈥� Honig says. 鈥淲here are the young people? Africa.鈥�

RELATED: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.

Africans already have the right business instincts. 鈥淎frica is a continent of entrepreneurs,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou have no choice. If you need a part, you can鈥檛 order it from somewhere else. It might take six months or a year to come. So you make it yourself.鈥�

Honig鈥檚 remarks came at聽鈥淯nleashing Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies,鈥� a conference hosted last week at the聽聽in Boston.

He believes such ingenuity can be tapped and shared across the world. 鈥淢icro-credit, cell phone banking. These are African innovations that are just starting to make an impact in Canada and the US.鈥�

Honig is part of a movement in the business school world, a movement that sees local, on-the-ground entrepreneurship as the most effective way to help kick-start the economies of developing nations.

He was joined at the Hult conference by professors from business schools in the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Pakistan, Nigeria, and more. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all optimists,鈥� says , who teaches corporate responsibility and social innovation at Hult. 鈥淲e all see Africa rising.鈥�

One reason why Africa is moving up: access to capital.

鈥淚nnovation requires capital, but historically people from outside the US have had limited access to funding,鈥� says , managing director at Southboro Capital and entrepreneurship professor at Hult. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, 鈥渢he venture industry has turned on its head. We now have an extraordinary opportunity for new ventures around the world.鈥�

But do companies in Accra, Ghana, or Abuja, Nigeria, need Western-style management techniques?

鈥淚t鈥檚 an open question,鈥� acknowledges , Dean of the Plymouth University Business School in England, 鈥渨hether what happens in a Western business school has any effect on what happens in South Sudan or Kenya or Tanzania.鈥�

鈥淵ou can鈥檛 just try to replicate what鈥檚 happening in one region,鈥� agrees Grandinetti.聽鈥淭here鈥檚 so much localization required. Every region needs to be clear on what its strengths are.鈥�

is on the faculty at the Lagos Business School in Nigeria. She says entrepreneurship is 鈥渋ntrinsic to African culture.鈥� But she鈥檚 also worried about the cultural gap between the West and her home. Because of her Western education, she says, 鈥淚 have begun to feel like a foreigner in my own country.鈥� She stresses the importance of cooperating with African entrepreneurs and learning from them, rather than just mouthing Western management buzzwords.

鈥淪ome solutions are African,鈥� argues Honig. 鈥淪ome are ours. Some African solutions may even work here . . . we can鈥檛 say any longer: We鈥檙e doing it here, so you should be doing it there.鈥�

One way business may differ for entrepreneurs in the developing economies of Africa: an expectation that they behave with social responsibility.

鈥淭he old Western model of divide and conquer and exploit is not acceptable anymore,鈥� Honig says. 鈥淲e have a responsibility in the globalized world. We鈥檙e no longer capable of saying, 鈥榃e don鈥檛 care what happens over there.鈥� 鈥�

Grandinetti points to the work of Jessica Matthews, an entrepreneur and Harvard graduate who has guest lectured to his students at Hult. Matthews, a Nigerian-American, helped found a start-up called , which has developed the Soccket, a soccer ball that鈥檚 also a portable generator.

Grandinetti says that鈥檚 just one example of how young entrepreneurs can change lives in resource-poor communities around the world.

鈥淲e鈥檙e starting to see every corner of the earth embrace entrepreneurship,鈥� he says. 鈥淣ot just for profit, but for social good.鈥�

鈥� at , an online news site that covers stories showing the links between American communities and the rest of the world.

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