Business In Africa In The Era Of Digital Technology

This book covers various aspects of business such as Entrepreneurship, HR management, Supply chain management, Marketing, Finance, and Globalization within the Africa Context, especially as digital technology changes the African society. Private and NGOs are emerging with greater capabilities and affecting the development of Africa, and this volume explores the impact of such change. This edited volume honours the exemplary contribution of Professor William Darley to the creation and development of the Academy of African Business and Development (AABD). The book is intended for graduate students and researchers interested in business development and practices in Africa.

The dynamics of the world’s pervasive digital technologies is transforming organisations and enabling enterprises to create sustainable competitive advantage. This presents huge economic opportunities for Africa. This book responds to the need for African enterprises and organisations—particularly those in the service sector—to fully exploit the inherent potential in digital platforms by putting in place processes to respond effectively to changing consumer demands. Digital service delivery is conceptualised as a key driver of effective management and service delivery across the value chain of businesses. The authors offer insights into the opportunities, drivers, structures, and models of digital service delivery specific to the African context, using case studies and country-based themes that highlight how the adoption of digital platforms and practices can transform service delivery for value-creation. The book examines the scope and applications of digital businesses, emphasising the emergence, value-creation, and strategic implications for Africa’s private and public enterprises. Students, entrepreneurs, IT innovators, academics, and policymakers will gain a greater understanding of how digitalisation is shaping consumer expectations, industry practices, and service delivery in Africa.

The hope and hype about African digital entrepreneurship, contrasted with the reality on the ground in local ecosystems. In recent years, Africa has seen a digital entrepreneurship boom, with hundreds of millions of dollars poured into tech cities, entrepreneurship trainings, coworking spaces, innovation prizes, and investment funds. Politicians and technologists have offered Silicon Valley–influenced narratives of boundless opportunity and exponential growth, in which internet-enabled entrepreneurship allows Africa to “leapfrog” developmental stages to take a leading role in the digital revolution. This book contrasts these aspirations with empirical research about what is actually happening on the ground. The authors find that although the digital revolution has empowered local entrepreneurs, it does not untether local economies from the continent's structural legacies. Drawing on a five-year research project, the authors show how entrepreneurs creatively and productively adapt digital technologies to local markets rather than dreaming of global dominance, achieving sustainable businesses by scaling based on relationships and customizing digital platform business models for African infrastructure challenge. The authors examine African entrepreneurial ecosystems; show that African digital entrepreneurs have begun to form a new professional class, becoming part of a relatively exclusive cultural and economic elite; and discuss the impact of Silicon Valley's mythologies and expectations. Finally, they consider the implications of their findings and offer recommendations to policymakers and others.

This pioneering collection seeks to understand why and how some digital enterprises in Africa progress while others firms either stagnate or regress. Using a range of detailed case studies, it addresses the challenges and barriers that are in place and how some outstanding digital firms deal with operating in a hostile business environment. While digital platforms have created equal access for small businesses, many digital entrepreneurs in Africa continue to struggle with local environments replete with corruption, and other economic inefficiencies. The contributions move the debate forward by addressing the challenges, opportunities, and prospects of digital enterprise in Africa. Placing special emphasis on how African new entrant digital firms are shaping the landscape and forging a new beginning for Africa, this book offers entrepreneurial perspectives to both researchers and policy-makers seeking to support and stimulate entrepreneurship in the new era.

For African enterprises, entrepreneurs and governments to take full advantage of new digital opportunities, they need a shared strategic understanding of where they are, what they have, and what they may need to have for the future. This book presents this shared strategic vision to guide future coordinated actions of African enterprises, entrepreneurs, consumers/citizens and governments in using new and emerging digital technologies. It showcases how consumers/citizens, entrepreneurs, organisations, institutions and governments are leveraging new and emerging digital innovations to disrupt and transform value creation and service delivery in Africa.

All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, broader use can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of country populations averaged across Sub-Saharan Africa, but only 22 percent use such services. The average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers, as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: the affordability of these new technologies and the willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small and medium businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skill-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty across Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.

Volume 23 (2022/2023) of the African Development Perspectives Yearbook focusses on the issues of digital entrepreneurship, digital start-ups, and digital business opportunities in Africa. It investigates links between digitalization and development of productive capacities. It deals with business opportunities created by the digital transformation. It discusses the role of universities in the digital transformation process. It also presents book reviews and book notes. Country case studies include Senegal, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and South Africa.

This book examines sustainable development in the broader framework of Africa post COVID-19. Specifically, the book studies governance and digitalization from the perspective of natural environment management, climate change, the green economy, as well as agriculture and education. Digitalization supports the deepening of natural resource governance by assessing extractive practices, sovereign wealth funds and the emerging discourse on global warming and green economic policies. This analytical exercise will better inform economic and socio-political policies and institutions for African development. The book, against the backdrop of the United Nations Agenda 2030 and the African Union Agenda 2063, offers unique insights on digitalization, governance, the green economy, and natural resource regime in Africa post COVID-19.