Promoting Social Entrepreneurship in Pakistan

As I had noted in an earlier post, social entrepreneurship offers exciting prospects for harnessing the talents of Pakistanis. While there are several challenges, including access to finance and capacity constraints of the entrepreneurs themselves, it is heartening to note that promotion of entrepreneurship is beginning to attract attention in several quarters. As reported in the Business Recorder, the Institute of Business Administration Karachi, which is now headed by my former boss Dr. Ishrat Husain and is the best and oldest business school in Pakistan, is setting up a Centre for Entrepreneurship Development, which is great news not only because it would provide an institutional arrangement for filling in immediate capacity gaps, but also because it would help prepare a cadre of entrepreneurial managers who can take this agenda forward. Under Dr. Husain's leadership, I have no doubt that this initiative will help lay a sound basis for promotion of entrepreneurship.

On a related note, while there are already several social entrepreneurship initiatives operating in the country, but I was very happy to read Bina Shah's article in Dawn about the work being done Thardeep and my old friend Sonu Khangrani, for promoting drip irrigation in the poverty-stricken Thar region of Sindh province. This initiative demonstrates how social entrepreneurship can help find new solutions to perennial problems.