SPI presents study on entrepreneurship in Angola

On 4 July, the Portuguese Society of Innovation (SPI), together with the Catholic University of Angola (UCAN) and with the support of Banco de Fomento Angola (BFA), presented at a hotel in Luanda, the results of the study Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2012, which still show that Angolans are among the most enterprising people in the world.
The event, attended by numerous Angolan personalities of spheres of business, politics and education, exhausted the capacity of the room where they performed, proving once again the strong interest that the theme of entrepreneurship awakens among policy makers and the country's economic.
The tasks of reporting the study were given by Augusto Medina, president of the board of SPI, and Manuel Alves da Rocha, an economist and director of the Center for Studies and Scientific Research of UCAN. They were also involved in the session.
The study revealed that more than 32 percent of Angolans between 18 and 64 are involved in creating and managing business under three and a half years old. This proportion has been increasing steadily since 2008, showing that the Angolan entrepreneurial fervour seems to have come to stay. Angola was quoted as the sixth most entrepreneurial country in the universe of 69 who participated in GEM 2012. Comparatively, Portugal occupies the 44th position.
The presentation of GEM Angola 2012 reached great notoriety among the Angolan media, including honours deserving of front-page newspaper in Jornal de Angola. Also the Public Television of Angola, the newspaper Expansion and EXAME Angola, the latter media partner of the project, given high prominence to GEM.
The GEM project is a periodic assessment of entrepreneurial activity, aspirations and difficulties of individuals in a wide range of countries. Currently, the GEM is the largest study of entrepreneurial dynamics in the world. Originally driven by Babson College (USA) and London Business School (UK), the first edition of this study took place in 1999 and covered 10 countries. Thirteen years later, the 2012 edition included the participation of 69 countries, including Angola, who participated for the third time, after 2008 and 2010.