UC Riverside

Abstract: Once considered an underclass, Gurage people have emerged as Ethiopia’s quintessential entrepreneurial class over the last seven decades. Studies on entrepreneurialism often focus on factors contributing to entrepreneurial success, such as ethnicity. The Gurage case study rethinks entrepreneurialism as nation making, demonstrating how Gurage entrepreneurialism was essential to the formation of Ethiopia’s modern economy and nation state in the twentieth century. The success of Gurage entrepreneurialism partly depended on support from the Ethiopian imperial state. The principal argument developed here is that Gurage entrepreneurs’ struggle against the ‘expatriate’ domination of Ethiopia’s capitalist commerce came to be constituted as a struggle for national economic independence, which was central to the nation-making project in this post-liberation period. In the process, Gurage transformed their own previous marginalization and denigration as ‘foreigners’ to become quintessential Ethiopian nation builders. It is a story about Gurage entrepreneurialism’s input into the Ethiopian nation-building project, one that contributes to larger theoretical discussions about entrepreneurialism, nation making, the state–market nexus and threats of foreign dominance in African markets.