Business as family, family as business: Female entrepreneurship in Kampala, Uganda

Female entrepreneurship has become a key policy focus of governments and development agencies in the global South, reifying the figure of the independent businesswoman. This article advances debates on the relationship between entrepreneurship and family through a longitudinal study of the experiences of female entrepreneurs in Kampala, Uganda. Drawing on a four-year panel of life history interviews, we demonstrate the value of an ‘entrepreneurial life course’ perspective for understanding the ways in which social and familial relations facilitate female entrepreneurship at certain junctures and restrict it at others. This perspective contributes to the literature on social embeddedness by foregrounding the temporal dimension of entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it illustrates the volatilities that characterise entrepreneurial life in urban African settings, challenging linear understandings of the entrepreneurial cycle that are based on the historical experiences of entrepreneurs in the global North.