E ngagement of disabled people in E ntrepreneurship Programmes in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The research is aims at identifying the potential factors affecting the business growth and performance of businesses run by entrepreneurs with disabilities in Zimbabwe. Disabled Entrepreneurship is relatively unfamiliar both to people with disability themselves and other disability organizations (e.g. support services, social enterprise etc.) This paper is exploratory in nature as it attempts to identify the important factors which are related to disabled entrepreneurship. The study explored the level of community engagement of people with disabilities into entrepreneurship programs in Harare Central province, Zimbabwe. The engagement was measured in terms of provision of technical assistance, funding, business networking including legal and policies issues regarding entrepreneurship. A snowballing sampling technique was employed and 30 people with disabilities (16 females and 14 males) constituted the study sample. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used in data gathering and data analysis. The study found that entrepreneurship programs in Harare were exclusionary in nature. The background literature review, complimented by the evidence gathered during the fieldwork for this study, categorically demonstrates that disabled people are the most marginalized, socially excluded and poorest groups in Zimbabwean society. It is already known that living in poverty increases the likelihood of getting an impairment. Generally people experience higher rates of poverty as a result of being disabled, and that when people living in poverty become disabled they are often severely marginalized than the abled people.