Can Entrepreneurship Actually Change Communities?

An interview conducted for Business Review's ongoing series on economic mobility in fast-growing cities.

Amara Nwosu: Your programmes are often described as entrepreneurship programmes, but a lot of what you've said today sounds more like infrastructure. Is that a fair read?

Alistair Wren: It's the correct read. Entrepreneurship is the visible part. What actually determines whether it works is closer to plumbing — credit, logistics, documentation. None of it photographs well, which is probably why it gets talked about less.

Amara Nwosu: Does that make the work harder to communicate publicly?

Alistair Wren: Considerably. It's much easier to announce a fund than to explain why a fund without a functioning credit-reference system will mostly fail. But the second conversation is the one that matters.