Worldwide sustainable development is impossible without countries from the third world catching up with more developed economies. Entrepreneurship in these countries would increase innovation and social welfare; however, there are many obstacles along the way that prohibit an entrepreneurial culture from setting foot. In this paper we analyze such obstacles for Ghana, which is representative of many African countries. For that purpose, we conducted 11 interviews with entrepreneurs from Ghana and with experts on the Ghanaian economic situation Our interviews confirm that lacking infrastructure, corruption, limited access to financing, loose regulation, and limited human capital constitute significant obstacles to innovation. Further, we find cases where promising new markets broke down due to the entry of low-quality imitators. We devote a separate section of the article to the analysis of this market-for-lemons-like problem