Measuring National Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Africa: A Critical Response

Alex Coad (), Clemens Domnick (), Naudé, Wim (), Pietro Santoleri () and Stjepan Srhoj ()
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Alex Coad: Waseda Business School, Waseda University, Japan
Clemens Domnick: Joint Research Centre, European Commission
Naudé, Wim: RWTH Aachen University
Pietro Santoleri: Joint Research Centre, European Commission
Stjepan Srhoj: University of Split, Croatia

No 18774, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: This paper critically examines the Africa Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Index (AEEI) introduced by Stam et al. (2026) in World Development. We identify a series of technical, mathematical, and empirical problems in the construction and interpretation of the index. At the technical level, the paper contains inconsistent notation, equation-level errors, and ambiguities in the definition of key quantities. At the empirical level, the AEEI suffers from important representational limitations, including the exclusion of roughly half of African countries, the combination of indicators drawn from very different time windows, and reliance on data sources whose coverage may reflect platform visibility as much as underlying entrepreneurial activity. The data released by the authors raise questions about the reproducibility of the results, including issues with published rankings, variable construction and country coverage. and treatment of missing values. Finally, we document concerns regarding the paper’s text lifting and lack of engagement with prior criticism. The paper calls into question the usefulness of the AEEI as a scientifically rigorous measure of entrepreneurial ecosystems suitable for comparative analysis and policy use.

Keywords: entrepreneurial ecosystems; Africa; composite indices; replication studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B41 C43 L26 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
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