Creativity from the margins: night-time business as a path towards young people's entrepreneurship in urban Cameroon

Abstract

This paper assesses how important the night is for young entrepreneurs’ activities. Using ethnographic and biographical data, it analyzes two related facts. Firstly, the focus is on the exclusion of youth from informal commercial use of central public spaces during the day and the lack of institutional aids for their projects. Secondly, the night is considered as an alternative time of productivity that enables young entrepreneurs to accumulate and mobilize traditional financial channels for gradually accessing the requested capital they need to create their diurnal enterprise. Subsequently, the genesis of entrepreneurship trajectories among initially impoverished youth is scrutinized.