The objective of this article is to set a cornerstone to compare and
understand the phenomenon of graduate entrepreneurship in developing and
developed countries. Our central research questions are: Are there differences
in the entrepreneurial intentions of university students? What are the factors
that might explain potential differences in their entrepreneurial mind-set? In
response to these questions, we performed a cross-sectional study exploring the
prospective career paths of 2,353 university students from Namibia as well as
from Eastern and Western Germany. We found that Namibian students have a
higher entrepreneurial intention compared to their German counterparts. We
detected several differences between both countries and revealed explanatory
factors. However, they are not sufficient to explain the ‘regional dimension’ of
the higher entrepreneurial intentions in Namibia. Several implications are
presented.
