Fifty years after Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African nation, gained its independence from colonial rule, African economies continue to rest on a fragile foundation. Entrepreneurs must play an important role in developing the African continent, because both African governments and foreign aid have overall failed. In the face of these myriad of internal and external constraints on economic development, the history of entrepreneurship and future potential for entrepreneurship is often overlooked. This course will show that sub-Saharan Africa is¿and has been for centuries¿a thriving place of business, despite the obstacles of war, political and economic instability, disease, and famine. It will also focus on the challenges, such as local, regional, and national integration, access to credit and capital accumulation, and debt burden that African economies faced in the past, present, and future. Lastly, it will focus on the strategies that entrepreneurs in Africa¿local and foreign¿have developed to circumnavigate these challenges¿and the opportunities that they have created in spite of them. By taking a historical approach to the subjects of entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology in Africa, this course will define African entrepreneurship in a way that is rooted in Africans¿ historical experiences and use this definition to put Africa¿s current and future roles in the global economy into historical perspective.