In recent years, digital entrepreneurship has been promoted as a solution to the rising unemployment crisis among university graduates across Africa. Policymakers, NGOs, and tech corporations have framed it as a new path to economic mobility, particularly in communities with strong entrepreneurial traditions like the Akan (Ashanti) in Ghana. Yet, the reality many young people face is far from the promise.
Tessa Pijnaker, a social anthropologist from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, conducted fieldwork among young Akan university graduates, tracking their journey through what she calls "serial digital entrepreneurship." These young adults, often with high hopes and strong family expectations riding on their shoulders, launched one digital startup after another—only to encounter repeated failure.
In the Akan community, which values entrepreneurship and familial duty, higher education is often seen as a family investment. Parents expect their children, especially the eldest, to land well-paying jobs after graduation, support their siblings’ education, and elevate the entire family’s status. When this pathway falters, disappointment runs deep.
Pijnaker tells the story of Kwabena Osei, a university graduate who co-founded a tech startup aimed at helping small local businesses digitize their operations. After three years of hard work, Osei and his team were forced to shut down due to a lack of revenue and dwindling investor interest. "My parents cast me out," he said painfully. "As the firstborn, I was supposed to repay their investment in me and help fund my siblings’ education. Now they see me as a failure."
Osei is not alone. Francesca Frimpong, another young entrepreneur, initially found some success when her team secured $100,000 from an American investor. However, they were unable to raise additional funding and eventually closed their company. Unlike Osei, her family did not reject her—but the emotional weight of failure was still present.
These stories mirror similar experiences in Europe. Take Emily Thompson, a British computer science graduate who moved to Berlin with two university friends to launch a time-tracking app for remote workers. At first, they attracted attention from a London-based accelerator and briefly tasted success. But when technical issues piled up and user growth stalled, the funding dried up. Emily ended up delivering food to cover rent while the startup unraveled. "My parents thought I was ‘running a company in Germany.’ I could barely tell them I was broke."
What ties these cases together is not just the collapse of a dream, but the heavy burden of social expectations. In Ghana, where many families rely on the success of their most educated members, failure is not just personal—it’s collective. And when digital entrepreneurship is presented as the only way up, the fall becomes even harder to bear.
Pijnaker points to a major flaw in how digital entrepreneurship is sold to young people. Many tech hubs and incubators champion the idea that long cycles of trial and error are necessary stepping stones to eventual success. "Fail fast, learn faster," they say. But this narrative rarely encourages alternative strategies like career pivots, risk management, or simply stepping away from a venture that isn't working.
Nele van Doninck, a doctoral candidate at KU Leuven in Belgium, observed similar dynamics in Kenya’s Kibera slum. Despite a rise in digital skills training programs, she noted that few young people saw real improvements in social mobility. Digital skills were more a symbol of hope than a path to real change.
The situation underscores a deeper crisis: university degrees no longer guarantee middle-class security. Faced with a shrinking formal job market, many young Africans are nudged—or pushed—into entrepreneurship. But instead of gaining independence, many find themselves isolated, financially unstable, and estranged from their families.
To be clear, entrepreneurship isn’t inherently bad. Many young people in Europe and the U.S. have successfully built their careers from startup ventures. But the problem arises when society treats it as a one-size-fits-all solution. In doing so, we risk turning a generation’s dreams into a quiet kind of despair.
What’s needed is a broader cultural shift—one that allows room for failure, career changes, and diverse paths to success. As Emily Thompson later reflected in a public talk: "Not every dream needs to become a company. Not every failure is shameful. Sometimes, saying ‘I just need a job’ is a sign of growth."
Rather than asking whether digital entrepreneurship in Africa is a utopia, a mirage, or a trap, perhaps we should be asking a different question: are we forcing too many young people to chase the same dream, while denying them the right to choose a different future?