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The article questions the specific form that the re-emergence of the discourse on entrepreneurship is taking today in Benin, by looking at the evolution of the figure of the small entrepreneur in the - globalized - discourse of development institutions on the one hand, and at the way in which this ideologized figure has been accepted and reinterpreted by the local elite and the population targeted by entrepreneurship support programs on the other hand. Through the analysis of interviews and focus groups, our results show that although the designation “entrepreneur” has now widely been adopted locally, the term, in contrast to recent trends in aid policies, is mainly associated with the successful safeguarding of the domestic group and the creation of work for others.