Challenges Faced By SMEs In African Countries:Case Study Focusing On Uganda

Since the1990s, studies utilizing descriptive statistics have documented factors in the business environment, which hinder the performance of African micro and small enterprises (MSEs). Based on secondary data, this is an Illustrative study aimed at assessing the trend of critical factors faced by SMEs in Africa but with emphasis on Uganda. The privatization drive and the Civil and Public Service reforms that began in the early1990s in Uganda laid a foundation for an increased number of small business enterprises. By2002, small scale enterprises were employing approximately2,000,000, and serving about6,000,000people at business and household level. The entrepreneurs that set up these enterprises lack business management skills and capital, and as such, many of them face a number of problems, most of which are of a startup nature. The causes of small and medium businesses failure are multidimensional and diverse. They include poor management as well as political, economic, social, cultural and environmental factors. In practice, many of these are interrelated.This study has six sections, the introduction, the Literature, a chapter on the Challenges to SME development in Uganda, and a chapter on the Recommendations to said issues and then the analysis and conclusion.