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.
