Duration of Support and Financial Health of Business Support Structures in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Ghana: A Micro-Econometric Analysis

ABSTRACTAccess to finance is perceived as one of the major problems facing businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the structures that support them in their development. This paper aims to measure the probability that a support structure with given characteristics, specific services to entrepreneurs and some technical capacities will face large-scale financial problems. We estimate a multinomial logistic model using a pool of disaggregated data collected by the Nkafu Policy Institute in a survey of 80 business support structures in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana in 2021. Our results show that the financial health of a business support structure is not fundamentally dependent on the duration of support, but rather on other factors related to the quality of services offered to entrepreneurs.KEYWORDS: Duration of supportfinancial health of businessesSub-Saharan Africamultinomial logit model AcknowledgmentsThe authors are indebted to the editor and reviewers for constructive comments.Supplementary MaterialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15228916.2023.2257554Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Business support structures or Support Structures refer to organizations that help start-ups and individual entrepreneurs grow their businesses through a full range of services from management training and office space to venture capital financing. They are also called Business Incubators.Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the International Development Research Centre, Grant Number 109453-001.