The promotion of green entrepreneurship: What role for the Moroccan university? The case of Sultan Moulay Slimane University

Abstract

The development, whether economic, social or environmental, of our country depends on its capacity to create and develop innovative products and services. The creation of green activity and the creation of green companies and start-ups are thus fully involved in this process. For this reason, higher education institutions have invested in this new dynamic of green entrepreneurial culture, in particular through the support and monitoring of innovative green projects. Of course, entrepreneurship is a process that requires certain skills and attitudes, which can only be acquired through well adapted teaching and training programmes. Such programmes would eventually foster the emergence of business ideas or opportunities, and ultimately the creation of a business. Like most disciplines that belong to the management and social sciences. Green entrepreneurship can even be the subject of academic teaching in Morocco.

The main question of our research is: What is the role that the Moroccan university can play in promoting green entrepreneurship in Morocco? Our research aims to provide some answers to this question. In order to define it closely, we will take a practical case, namely the Sultan Moulay Slimane University of Béni-Mellal, with the aim of drawing certain conclusions and recommendations.

Indeed, to answer our problematic we intend to adopt a mixed research approach in a perspective where we can associate the qualitative (semi-directive interviews) with the quantitative (questionnaire) through triangulation. It should be noted that despite the richness of the theoretical field with regard to the availability of information on entrepreneurship, the treatment of "green entrepreneurship" remains limited or non-existent. This is the main reason why we will discuss the role of the university in promoting green entrepreneurship in a broad sense. In the empirical part, we will try to see if the Sultan Moulay Slimane University is able to sensitize its students to become eco-entrepreneurs.

From the analysed results of our quantitative study, we can say that students consider green entrepreneurship to be very important. However it is the gain that remains their major concern in relation to autonomy and self-realisation. Among their suggestions, they propose the setting up of training courses and seminars so that they can familiarise themselves with this new concept. As for the result of the qualitative study, we can say that Sultan Moulay Slimane University needs to review its pedagogical practices, to introduce a module on green entrepreneurship, to encourage students to present green projects and to give importance to eco-responsible skills and competences.

JEL Classification: Q56

Paper type: Empirical research.