Exploring Social Enterprises Ethiopia

Social enterprises are organizations that seek to meet social needs whilst generating their won financial returns. The impact which social enterprises have is not clearly understood. With the social enterprise phenomenon still in its embryonic stages of development in Africa, there is a dearth in research that contributes to our holistic understanding of social enterprises. Accordingly, this research sought to explore the phenomenon of social enterprises and their effect on poverty alleviation within the Ethiopian non-profit sector. The findings of the study show that there is lack of a clear universal understanding of the social enterprise phenomenon in Ethiopia. A myriad of factors were seen to largely contribute to the success of most Social Enterprise initiatives in Ethiopia. these were inter alia, human capital, financial capital, political capital, social capital, partnerships and networking and use of various media platforms. It is also evident that social enterprises are contributing to increased skills development, job creation, innovations, and help the poor to be independent and alleviating poverty.