Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development

Abstract

Business entrepreneurship activities in Nigeria has been on the increase, causing changes and boosting economic development to some existent especially in the provision of self employment and earning profit only. But to meet the challenge of sustainable development we require social entrepreneurship which is the application of entrepreneurship attributes of creativity, innovation and motivation combined with the drive to solve the most pressing social problems in the society. The study evaluated the contributions of social entrepreneurship and its core elements in sustainable development using a cross section of entrepreneurs and interest groups from Imo and Abia States. While simple correlation analysis was used to process the data. It was revealed that social entrepreneurship has not contributed effectively to sustainable development due to low level of creativity and innovation in our entrepreneurs Also, this has adversely affected development of women and rural areas. It is therefore recommended that entrepreneurship programmes should not just focus on business – profit and wealth creation but improvement of citizens creativity and innovativeness capability. This will facilitate sustainable development.

Keywords: Business entrepreneurship social entrepreneurship, sustainable development creativity, innovation.