Operational definitions of every term used across the OSE framework — for the programme officer with five minutes before a meeting, the researcher who needs a citable formulation, and the procurement team aligning vocabulary.
The five access levels of OSE Expert. Free opens the atlas and the open methodology; Institutional adds country profiles and the COTEE, gender and AEEI readings; Premium adds deep dives and the policy-maker reading; VVIP adds dynamic capabilities and the strategic radar. Research is an orthogonal right that unlocks exports on any tier.
A support organization — incubator, accelerator, fund, public agency, programme, university unit — verified, classified and scored by the OSE pipeline on 14 observed indicators, with its boosts and ties. 60,694 qualified actors across 153 countries at the last count.
Index published by africa.ecosystem.build applying the Stam & van de Ven (2021) ten-element framework to 54 African countries (30 ranked with a composite score, 20 underlying indicators, 7 measured pillars; leadership is not measured). Interfaced live in OSE Expert and re-read through COTEE.
An equality index aligned with the Africa Gender Index (AfDB / UNECA), computed from World Bank Gender Statistics — female labour-force participation, Women, Business & the Law, female tertiary enrolment, parliamentary seats, on three dimensions (economic, social, representation), 0–100 (100 = parity). 53 African countries scored; mean 49, from 29 (Mauritania) to 79 (Mozambique). Crossed with women-focused structures in the OSE registry.
In COTEE, the deliberately built support — incubators, accelerators, programmes, agencies: the gardener. An apparatus builder is an ecosystem whose support is predominantly constructed (43 on the OSE base) as opposed to endowment-based (68). The apparatus multiplies venture creation only where rules bind.
Lift between two boosts — how much more often one appears when the other is present. Strongest on the OSE base: Test→Proto (×20.7), Sales→Market (×11.5), Team→Mentor (×9.0).
The free public map of all qualified actors on expert.ose.africa, filterable by country, type and layer. The entry point of every institutional engagement.
A non-financial support an actor actually delivers, qualified from observed activity rather than declarations. 14 canonical boosts (Innov, Proto, Test, Team, Plan, Legal, Sales, Market, Skill, Mentor, Net, Legit, Infra, Mind) sorted into five layers, plus 14 sectoral boosts (v2) for vertical markets.
Share of the 14 canonical boosts covered by at least one actor in the ecosystem (Level 2, architecture). World value 100 %.
Guéneau's integrative framework (Level 1): an ecosystem is cultivated by a seed (the actors present), a soil (rule enforcement) and a gardener (deliberately built support). Central result: the support apparatus only pays off where rules are binding — inert as a main effect, powerful as a complement of the institutional regime. Replicated on 111 countries.
The COTEE 2×2 crossing rule enforcement (weak → enforced) with the type of support (endowment-based → apparatus builder). Predicted new-firm creation per 1,000 working-age adults: 1.3 → 6.4 for apparatus builders, 1.5 → 4.0 for endowment-based ecosystems.
Density of the top-30 co-occurrence network between actors (Level 2, architecture). Qatar 0.146 vs Saudi Arabia 0.063.
mean(CI, 1 − SRI, VRIO, FDI), each term normalised (Level 2, orchestration). World value 0.72.
An ecosystem whose support is predominantly inherited or spontaneous rather than deliberately built — 68 on the OSE base against 43 apparatus builders. Under enforced rules its predicted creation rises from 1.5 to 4.0 per 1,000 adults.
A country's capacity to make its own rules bind, measured with the Worldwide Governance Indicators 2023. In COTEE it is the soil: a necessary condition for venture creation (consistency 0.854, coverage 0.775 — H2) and the regime that conditions every other reading.
Normalised Shannon entropy of the boost mix — how evenly the ecosystem's functions are distributed (Level 2, architecture). World 0.87, Gulf 0.79, Oceania 0.93. Not to be confused with foreign direct investment.
The five testable claims of COTEE: H1 a profile, not a score (α = 0.001); H2 enforcement is necessary (0.854); H3 the cultivation interaction (apparatus × enforcement, β 0.23); H4 the module is urban (68.4 % intra-country variance); H5 the overlay gradient (legibility inverts with enforcement, β −0.341).
The five OSE layers into which the boosts are sorted: L1 Technical (Innov, Proto, Test, Team, Plan, Legal, Sales, Market), L2 Cognitive (Skill), L3 Relational (Mentor, Net), L4 Symbolic (Legit, Infra), L5 Psychological (Mind). Read as a profile — never summed.
10+ years of observation of the same actors and indicators — before/after readings of policies and programmes instead of snapshot surveys. H5 is tested on a longitudinal press panel (19 countries, 2014–2023, 154 country-years).
Sub-community detected in the actor network by modularity optimisation. With centralities, the network-level reading of who works with whom in a country profile.
An organization whose members are themselves organizations. Guéneau et al. (2026, Journal of Business Venturing Insights) read entrepreneurial ecosystems as meta-organizations: authority without hierarchy, membership boundaries, orchestration of complementarities. Level 2 of the OSE framework, subordinate to COTEE.
The relevant unit of an ecosystem in COTEE: the urban basin, not the national envelope. 68.4 % of composition variance is within countries (H4); the national figure is an aggregate of modules. Never read above the module.
Renewal of the meta-organization measured by founding cohorts of its member actors (Level 2, architecture). Peak cohort 2015; 19.9 % of actors founded since 2020.
COTEE's four-step policy sequence: read the soil before funding contents; find the modules; couple, do not overlay (fund pathways, not portals; sunset clauses on one-stop shops); institutionalise what has grown.
The scientific observatory behind OSE in Africa: it maps, qualifies and measures the actors that support entrepreneurs across Africa, MENA, the Gulf and Europe under one framework — 60,694 actors, 153 countries, 14 indicators, 10+ years.
The inversion of the effect of interface legibility (portals, one-stop shops) with enforcement: positive but not significant where rules are weak (+0.12), negative and significant where they are applied (−0.46); interaction β −0.341 (t −3.82).
Two of the six Architecture × Substance readings. P1: ecosystem advantage is a governance achievement, not an endowment (R² 0.20, 63 countries above the expected line). P3: 93 of 115 countries (81 %) have their architecture ahead of their substance.
COTEE's first rule of use: the components of an ecosystem do not correlate (α = 0.001), so a sum destroys the information. OSE reports layers, boosts and regimes as a profile read conditionally on enforcement.
SRI crossed with fragility: is duplication a buffer or a waste? 31 countries in adaptive resilience, 26 in wasted redundancy.
The continuous re-checking of every actor by the OSE pipeline: defunct programmes, duplicates and ghost incubators are removed rather than kept as live. Measured, not declared.
The first COTEE layer: the actors present — finance, talent, knowledge, the organizations counted in a registry. Necessary, never sufficient on its own.
The second COTEE layer: rule enforcement — the country's capacity to make its rules bind (WGI 2023). The soil decides whether the seed yields anything.
Average number of actors delivering the same service (Level 2, orchestration). World 2.01, Africa 2.08, Americas 2.83.
The Stam & van de Ven (2021) inventory of an entrepreneurial ecosystem: formal institutions, entrepreneurial culture, networks, physical infrastructure, demand, intermediaries, talent, knowledge, finance, leadership. The AEEI measures nine of them in seven pillars; leadership is not measured — COTEE captures it as a mode (gardener vs architect) through the apparatus × enforcement interaction.
Weight of the three coordination mechanisms of a meta-organization: normative 36 %, resource-mediated 33 %, platform-based 31 %.
Share of the five OSE layers where the ecosystem holds valuable, rare, inimitable and organised resources (Level 2, orchestration). Strongest complementarity bundle: L2 Cognitive ↔ L3 Relational.
A support actor whose programme explicitly targets women entrepreneurs, tagged in the OSE registry and reported in ‰ of actors — e.g. Morocco 2 of 604 (3.3 ‰). Crossed with the AGI; correlation with density is weak (ρ ≈ +0.13).
The glossary grows with the framework. If you are preparing a tender or a paper and need a definition that is not here, tell us.
The observatory. Data, diagnostics and decision tools for the builders of entrepreneurial ecosystems.
The academy. Capacity building deployed where it's needed — online, on-site, in ecosystem residency.
The research society. The scholars advancing the science of entrepreneurial ecosystems.
