Rural economies are crucial for global development, with more than 80% of the world’s population living in rural areas and agriculture providing livelihoods for approximately 2.5 billion people worldwide. However, these economies are often vulnerable to various factors, including climate change, natural disasters, and a lack of progressive economic policies. The main aim of making rural economies more sustainable is to promote long-term economic development, protect the environment, and improve the quality of life in urban–rural communities. This paper explored certain strategies for enhancing rural economies to be more sustainable. The results show that smart growth has been rapidly growing in urban cities, while certain communities outside urban areas have been left behind. However, both urban and rural communities need economic growth and be adaptive to smart growth to serve their communities and adhere to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the new era of innovation. Thus, we argue that rural areas are a big part of emerging economies. As such, they cannot be left behind in any smart growth. In this study, we found that rural economies need training and up-skilling in order to improve their sustainability and efficiency targets. Through a systematic review, this paper looked at various ways rural communities can solve their challenges toward smart growth and the sustainability of their resources. As a result, we propose solutions for urban–rural communities to implement in daily activities in terms of policy and practice approaches.

It has been propagated by scholars and practitioners that entrepreneurship and innovation are potent tools that can be harnessed to transform rural areas, grow rural economies, create jobs, and enhance the prospects of attaining sustainable development goals (SDGs). Subsequently, these disciplines have garnered attention from researchers for virtually a century. Nonetheless, these researchers often focused on entrepreneurship and innovation activities in urban areas, thereby neglecting entrepreneurship and innovation activities in rural areas. Thus, there is a paucity of literature on rural entrepreneurship and innovation in the BRICS economies. Within the context of the agency theory and the Triple Helix Model of industrial policy, this study systematically reviews the literature on rural entrepreneurship and innovation in the Republic of South Africa. The study revealed that rural firms are risk-averse, which challenges the doctrine of rural transformation through rural entrepreneurship and innovation. Moreover, the ability to engage in entrepreneurship and innovation by rural firms is highly dependent on the availability of support from the government and actor networks. Subsequently, rural firms fail when support has been phased out. Thus, the government and actor networks should do things differently, with an emphasis on teaching rural firms to be independent and sustainable entrepreneurs and innovators.

It is argued in this article that many modern-day African states share a set of characteristics in their political ideology and economic doctrines which stem from a shared history of colonialism and forms of foreign occupation and subjugation of indigenous peoples. Policies such as black economic empowerment (BEE) in South Africa and indigenisation and economic empowerment (IEE) in Zimbabwe are archetypes of this policy explicitly aligned with this indigenisation project and designed to promote indigenous people’s participation in economic activities. In the context of this political economy of empowerment-oriented political ideology and legislative and policy frameworks in African states, this article seeks to define the features of indigenous entrepreneurship, which is the natural focus of much of the indigenisation project. It is theorised in this article that these factors combine to form a unique type of entrepreneurship, here termed indigenous entrepreneurship in the modern African state.

Using educational data-mining (EDM) approaches, this study examines the evolution and efficacy of entrepreneurship education at Durban University of Technology (DUT) from 2010 to 2020. The student enrollment and performance data were analyzed using random forests (RFs) and support vector machines (SVMs). According to the findings, which are in line with DUT’s “Envision 2030” strategic plan, there has been noticeable growth in student enrollment and the addition of new entrepreneurship modules since 2017. According to the study, the RF fared better in terms of predictive accuracy than the SVM did, indicating the value of EDM approaches in predicting trends in education. The findings validate DUT’s strategic objectives and indicate areas for further investigation that might include more variables and examine the effects of outside influences.

In developing countries, there is an increased emphasis on encouraging the commercialisation of research at universities. This triggers universities to adopt a culture of innovation and technological learning at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The focus of this review article is to highlight the benefits and challenges faced by researchers in the field of synthetic biology products, biotechnology, agribusiness, Biofuels and phytomedicine in commercialisation. The methodological approach was informed by a selection of electronic databases with a high chance of the selected field in relation to the commercialisation of the research outputs. Google Scholar, PubMed, and Higher Education and Science Technology South Africa Reports for entrepreneurial universities were searched, focusing on 2007 to 2023. The years proved to have played a role in furthering discussions and policy in research on commercialisation in South Africa, the benefits of research commercialisation, challenges of research commercialisation, its determinants, and its impact on academics, universities, and other stakeholders. The review findings suggest that the commercialisation of research is a challenging and complex task to execute, as there are very few cases in South Africa to have a successful academic intellectual property creation, licensing, academic entrepreneurship, and start-up of research. This is placed into context by the fact that the market for high-end products and processes is highly uncertain.

University–industry partnerships (UIPs) play a critical role in strengthening innovation systems and socioeconomic development, yet evidence on how these partnerships have evolved in post-apartheid South Africa remains fragmented. This qualitative systematic literature review synthesises four decades of research on South African UIPs to examine publication trends, theoretical frameworks, methodologies, institutional characteristics, and the role of boundary spanning. Following the PRISMA 2020 protocol, five academic databases were systematically searched, complemented by Google Scholar snowballing. From 12,257 records, 52 data sources met the inclusion criteria after screening. The findings show a shift from descriptive accounts of collaboration to innovation- and policy-oriented research. The Triple Helix and National Innovation System remain the dominant theoretical perspectives, while qualitative case studies predominate. Historically advantaged universities continue to dominate research-intensive partnerships, reflecting persistent institutional inequalities, and boundary-spanning roles are widely recognised despite the absence of explicit application of Boundary-Spanning Theory. The review further demonstrates that prevailing Northern innovation frameworks inadequately capture the historical and institutional realities of South Africa. It concludes that a localised, decolonial boundary-spanning framework offers a stronger basis for understanding collaboration across unequal institutional contexts and provides practical directions for policy, theory, and future research to support a more inclusive national innovation system.