Abstract:
Immigrant entrepreneurship, like other facets of entrepreneurship, contributes towards
a country’s productivity, partly through employment creation. However, the specific
factors, in the form of social capital, that lend themselves to this employment creation
potential, remain largely unknown. It is against this background that this study sought
to determine if the variables of language proficiency and networking ability bear an
association with the employment creation ability of African immigrant entrepreneurs.
This quantitative study was executed from a positivism philosophical standpoint.
Relying on the population of African immigrants in the small business sector in South
Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique, the non-probability sampling techniques of convenience
and snowball sampling were used to identify 2,500 participants. Data were
collected in a cross-sectional manner, with self-administered questionnaires and an
effective 33% response rate was realized.
Findings reveal a statistically significant relationship between language proficiency and
employment creation, while that between networking ability and employment creation
was not significant. Nonetheless, most of the studied African immigrant entrepreneurs
across the countries agreed that language proficiency and networking ability have
helped them cope with the rigors of operating their businesses. These findings signal
the need for interventions for building language proficiency and networking ability for
African immigrant entrepreneurs.
