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Entrepreneurship is a fundamental driver of economic growth and innovation, particularly in emerging economies where youth unemployment remains a critical challenge. This study examines the role of self-efficacy in shaping entrepreneurial motivation and behaviour among students at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), South Africa. Grounded in Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, this study integrates Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour and Becker’s Human Capital Theory to explore the link between self-efficacy, entrepreneurial intentions, and long-term business success. A qualitative research design was employed, involving in-depth interviews with purposively selected students enrolled in entrepreneurship programs. Thematic analysis was utilised to extract key themes related to self-efficacy, resilience, risk-taking behaviour, and socio-economic influences. The findings indicate that students with higher levels of self-efficacy demonstrate stronger entrepreneurial motivation, persistence, and proactive business engagement. The study further explores the role of mentorship programs, institutional support, and policy interventions in enhancing self-efficacy among young entrepreneurs. The research offers critical policy recommendations for higher education institutions, government bodies, and business incubators, advocating for structured entrepreneurship training, financial accessibility reforms, and mentorship-driven ecosystem development. The findings contribute to the growing body of literature on entrepreneurial self-efficacy in emerging markets and provide actionable strategies to foster an entrepreneurial mindset among university students.

The study under discussion aims to map the outlook for female business owners in South Africa by investigating nine stories shared by interviewees operating across industries, age groups, and holding different levels of education. Through a qualitative exploration grounded in the intersectionality theory, the research unveils a nuanced tapestry of challenges and opportunities shaping the experiences of these resilient entrepreneurs. The findings echo the transformative potential inherent in women-led businesses, vividly portraying them as dynamic agents fostering growth, attracting investments, and contributing positively to economic expansion, poverty alleviation, and community development.  The narrative portrays the leading women-run businesses as agents of change, instigating economic growth, attracting investments, and contributing positively to the realisation of social justice, poverty eradication, and improved livelihoods. The theme of patriarchy surfaces as a challenge in the entrepreneurial field, but with more pronounced adverse structures in opposition to free-playing entrepreneurship. The study that has exhausted all the topics ends with an emphasis on targeted interventions, acknowledging the obstacle of domestic constraints, improving cooperation, and dismantling patriarchal power structures. Its principles are establishing a supportive environment that considers the distinctive factors of women's entrepreneurship, resulting in economic empowerment and sometimes overall social development. Due to its active contribution to women's direction in business and in the implementation of pertinent targeted interventions, South Africa can employ women's potential fully, which can lead to economic growth and be socially beneficial in the meantime. The study also suggests that future inquiries to clear the sight about different actors within the entrepreneurship ecosystem and eventually form a comprehensive outlook of all factors that underline the complex business generation process.

The study analyzes the development of business incubation literature in South Africa. The VOSviewer software was used to perform the bibliometric analysis of 44 articles on business incubation in South Africa conducted between 1996 and 2023 that were obtained from the Scopus database. The study has also revealed literature on business incubation started to appear in 1996 in South Africa. The study’s keyword co-occurrence analysis also revealed that the following words had the most occurrences and were clustered into the following: entrepreneurship and business incubation, business incubators and effectiveness, entrepreneurial education and informal Business, SMEs and start-up, business and sustainability, and business development and competitiveness. The study sorts the articles based on the following indicators: number of documents published in a year, eminent authors and keyword co-occurrence, which identified six categories of the most prominent research themes being covered by articles reviewed. The study only used articles that were written in English language only. Therefore, future research should consider articles written in other languages and expand the study to other regions, continents, and even global scale.