Creating Jobs Through a Business Plan Competition: Does it matter how entrepreneurs are selected and how much funding they are given? David McKenzie July 27, 2026 This page in: English

https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/impactevaluations/creating-jobs-through-a-business-plan-competition--does-it-matte Of the estimated 244 million firms in Africa, 232 million (95%) are own-account businesses consisting of only the owner, and a further 7.7 million (3.1%) have fewer than five employees. A key policy objective is to increase the number of high-growth firms that hire workers and expand beyond this micro size. Business plan competitions have become one popular policy tool for this purpose. They aim to identify entrepreneurs with the ability to grow a larger firm, and then award grants to overcome capital constraints on this growth. I previously worked on evaluating the YouWin! business plan competition in Nigeria, which had a multi-stage selection process and gave winning entrepreneurs an average of US$50,000 each. This found large and sustained increases in job creation, leading Chris Blattman to ask whether it was one of the most effective development programs in history.