Entrepreneurial Intent and Venture Creation: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Business Education's Efficacy in Uganda (2021–2026)

Despite the significant expansion of formal business education in Uganda, its direct impact on fostering entrepreneurial intent and subsequent venture creation remains inadequately understood, creating a critical evidence gap for policymakers and educators. This mixed methods study, therefore, aims to empirically evaluate the efficacy of business education programmes in Uganda in stimulating entrepreneurial outcomes between 2021 and 2026. Employing an explanatory sequential design, the research first conducted a quantitative survey with 412 final-year business students from four universities, followed by in-depth qualitative interviews with 32 survey respondents who had progressed to early-stage venture creation. The quantitative phase revealed a strong positive correlation between experiential learning components and entrepreneurial intent, with students exposed to incubator programmes being 2.3 times more likely to express high intent. The qualitative findings subsequently identified the critical mediating mechanisms, principally the development of resilient self-efficacy and pragmatic network access, which translated intent into action. This study provides a novel, integrated analysis of the psychosocial and resource-based pathways through which education influences venture creation. The findings offer concrete implications for curriculum designers, advocating for a pronounced shift from purely theoretical instruction towards embedded experiential and mentorship-based learning models within Ugandan higher education.