Basha Bekele Barako
Currently, there has been a growing interest in small rural business development and entrepreneurship as conduits for accelerating job opportunities-for the youth and for poverty reduction. Despite the policy recognition, the economic performance of the rural entrepreneurs or enterprises is not ground-breaking. This might not be without any factors that daunting the development of the rural entrepreneurs to make their due contribution to the development of their community. Hence, this study was undertaken in order to assess common militating challenges of the development pace and fate of rural entrepreneurship, to trace out the opportunities open to start new businesses and expand the existing ones and to examine the prospects of rural entrepreneurship in order to achieve the desired objectives the study both qualitative as well as quantitative methods were employed. From the total of 503 entrepreneurs in the selected Kebeles, 125 samples were selected using multistage sampling technique. In order to gather data from the respondents, structured questionnaire and unstructured interview were employed as instruments of data collection. The data collected through questionnaire was analyzed quantitatively and to analyze the interview data qualitative approach was applied. After the data analyzed carefully, it was found that, the rural entrepreneurship in the study area conditioned by different business environment factors which are either internal or external to the businesses. Personal traits of business owners and managerial competences and skill related deficiencies are among internal factors affecting their success. Whereas market factors, economic factors, political factors and social factors were among the challenges external to the business setting. In order to make them a true catalysts of rural development, rural entrepreneurs themselves should be vigilant of the existing opportunities and make attempt to change opportunities into business, government should also play a primary role in solving its internal limitations that hinder the possibility of rural transformation through rural entrepreneurship and different bodies i.e. media, NGOs should take part in promoting rural entrepreneurship.
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