263 Copyright © 2015, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter 16 DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-7533-9.ch016 Mentalpreneurial Differences and Similarities: Ghanaian and United States Entrepreneurs who Start Family Businesses ABSTRACT This chapter identifies several challenges and positive trends that family businesses in Africa face. The challenges include relative lack of capital, lack of business freedom, and the high levels of corruption. Positive trends identified include infrastructural projects associated with the Chinese investments in Africa, the role of technology as a catalyst in helping social capital build-up of women entrepreneurs, and the strong correlation of good governance factors with indicators of ease of doing business. This chapter also identifies several similarities and the few differences that American and Ghanaian entrepreneurs face. Implications for research and lessons for prospective entrepreneurs are provided. INTRODUCTION Research on family business and its substantive entrepreneurial overlap, has been maturing as a distinct research area with clear depiction of its academic and practical relevance, and increasing geographic scope (Casillas and Acedo, 2007; Dawson and Hjorth, 2012; Litz, Pearson and Litchfield, 2012; Sharma, 2004; Sharma, Chris- man and Gersick, 2012). Despite these impressive strides in research in the family businesses, there are two substantial lacunae in the literature that this book seeks to address. First, despite calls by several scholars (e.g. Sharma et al., 2012; Sharma, 2004) for widening the societal and environ- mental context of family business research, its geographic context has been substantially limited in that the continent of Africa has been severely under-represented. Our second gap is that most of the theory and research underpinning family Joseph Ofori-Dankwa Saginaw Valley State University, USA Kwame Omane-Antwi Pentecost University College, Ghana