Wikidata Query of the month: September 2017

My month of September Wikidata query is inspired by Ghana’s first female Chief of Staff Mrs Frema Osei Opare who when asked “What would you do if you were 22 years old again?” in an interview retorted “Entrepreneurship”, adding that “this world is for doers, it is for those who don’t like to sit and wait”.

As has been investigated by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, entrepreneurship is thought to promote economic growth and increase employment. This means entrepreneurship is a sure ticket to moving closer to high income status, the more of them in any country the better.

But becoming an entrepreneur is not for everyone; its significantly more difficult than having a 9-5 job. Without asking how people turnout to become successful entrepreneurs, I’m firstly interested in knowing which parts of the worlds breed these special kind of people. I asked the Wikidata database by typing in the following query:

SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?country_of_citizenshipLabel ?place_of_birthLabel ?coord WHERE {
 ?item wdt:P106 wd:Q131524.
 ?item wdt:P27 ?country_of_citizenship.
 ?item wdt:P19 ?place_of_birth.
 ?place_of_birth wdt:P625 ?coord.
 SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en,de,ar,fr". }
}

and got this:

Place of birth of entrepreneurs on Wikidata

Concentration of the red dots on the map says it all. Africa as a continent has some of the fewest number of entrepreneurs. By the way, I should point out that not all entrepreneurs are listed on Wikidata, and not all Wikidata items about entrepreneurs have their place of birth listed. However, one would obviously have to be notable enough to have your occupation listed in Wikidata as an entrepreneur.

Zooming into Africa; South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Uganda have the highest number of entrepreneurs at 24, 18, 14 and 12 respectively.

Adjusting number of entrepreneurs in consideration of population of their respective countries, Libya, Tunisia and Republic of Congo have an estimated 5 entrepreneurs each per every ten million people in their country. The rest of the African countries have significantly lower entrepreneurs per capita, having 10 or less total number of entrepreneurs each.

To give some context, Germany has 309 entrepreneurs per every ten million of its population, Ghana has 4.

It’s been claimed that entrepreneurship was a major driver of economic growth in both the United States and Western Europe.[1] Africa’s leapfrog into modern technologies has been exciting, but if we’re to catch up with the rest of the modern world then entrepreneurship is one area that must be given keen attention because there is huge potential in it for everyone.