Entrepreneurial Resilience Among Displaced Entrepreneurs in Borno State’s Post-Insurgency Economy

This study examines entrepreneurial resilience among internally displaced entrepreneurs who have restarted or initiated businesses in Borno State, North East Nigeria, following displacement by the Boko Haram insurgency. Entrepreneurial resilience, the capacity to adapt, improvise, and rebuild enterprise activity in the face of severe disruption and resource loss, is a critical dimension of economic recovery in conflict-affected contexts. Borno State's slow economic recovery process makes an understanding of how displaced entrepreneurs build resilience particularly valuable for recovery policy. The study employs a qualitative phenomenological approach, conducting in-depth interviews with 20 displaced entrepreneurs who have restarted businesses in Maiduguri, drawing on their lived experiences of disruption, loss, adaptation, and rebuilding. Interviews were transcribed and subjected to interpretive phenomenological analysis. Findings reveal three primary resilience pathways: traders who reconstructed former businesses using social network capital mobilised from family, community, and Hausa-Fulani trading diaspora contacts; artisans who pivoted to new trade activities aligned with the post-displacement demand environment of a humanitarian relief economy; and social entrepreneurs who transformed personal trauma into community-focused enterprise missions. Spiritual and religious coping frameworks are identified as significant psychological resilience supports across all three pathways. The study argues that displaced entrepreneurs' resilience is collectively resourced rather than individually achieved, and that recovery support must address community-level enabling conditions. Recommendations include a dedicated displaced entrepreneur enterprise support programme administered through Borno State's SMEDAN office. Keywords: entrepreneurial resilience, displaced entrepreneurs, Borno State, post-conflict, economic recovery.