Digital Entrepreneurship In Sub Saharan Africa

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.

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.

This innovative book traces women’s entrepreneurial journeys in Sub-Saharan Africa, examining the linkages between entrepreneurship, gender and development context. With extensive case studies of women’s experiences across the enterprise life-cycle, it gives new insight into how to support and empower Sub-Saharan African female entrepreneurs.

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.

"Digital entrepreneurship has often been viewed as a game changer for African development. Empowered by a single smartphone, the thinking goes, an individual entrepreneur can lay the groundwork for the next Amazon or Apple, and this will jumpstart economic progress on the entire continent. However, the realities of actual African digital entrepreneurship are much more modest. Yes, individual entrepreneurs are able to use digital technology to create new solutions and to enrich their local economic, social, and political communities. However, the results do not typically scale widely, attract venture capital, or grow exponentially. This book provides a much-needed corrective to the hype surrounding digital entrepreneurship in Africa, laying out the empirical facts on the ground of what African digital entrepreneurship actually looks like. The authors worked together on a five-year research project that forms the basis of the book's findings. Their fieldwork was based in 11 cities: Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Dakar, Johannesburg/Pretoria, Lagos, Kampala, Kigali, Maputo, Nairobi, and Yaoundé. The book aims to understand the opportunities as well as limits that the rise of the internet has brought to ventures in Africa, painting a richer and more realistic picture than what is typically found in the digital innovation literature, media articles, and policy proposals. The authors find that African digital entrepreneurship: is highly unevenly distributed across the continent; is characterized by slow and mostly linear growth; creates digital products largely for customers in urban markets at local and regional scales; depends on entrepreneurial learning and ecosystem evolution, both processes that extend over long periods of time before producing palpable outcomes; consists of strategy innovations like the last-mile platform which blend digital technologies with analog outreach structures; has led to the emergence of new entrepreneurial identities; has triggered cultural and racial tensions as Silicon Valley's ideals have clashed with local realities and reproduced postcolonial dependencies. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications for entrepreneurs, investors, incubators, local governments, and donors. Rather than focusing on photo ops and buzzwords, stakeholders will have to play a long game, with a goal of focusing on local opportunities for innovating. Copying Silicon Valley is not a recipe for success. Entrepreneurs need to embrace the unique strengths of local contexts, and resources need to be allocated accordingly"--

This innovative book traces women's entrepreneurial journeys in Sub-Saharan Africa, examining the linkages between entrepreneurship, gender and development context. With extensive case studies of women's experiences across the enterprise life-cycle, it gives new insight into how to support and empower Sub-Saharan African female entrepreneurs. Exploring start-up, small and medium-sized enterprises, this book tracks the wide range of choices facing prospective and established female entrepreneurs, business owners and managers. Chapters cover new developments in business, including alternative entrepreneurial finance, collaborative networks, digital entrepreneurship and transitional entrepreneurship in women-owned businesses. Using original research spanning the tourism, hospitality, agriculture, education and financial services sectors, Michael Zisuh Ngoasong considers the role of family and ethnic structures in shaping women's business journeys. Through diverse case studies of women's successes and failures in business, Ngoasong provides new insight on the entrepreneurial opportunities, challenges, and risks facing Sub-Saharan African women. This book will be a rich resource for researchers and educators interested in entrepreneurship, gender and management, and development studies. It will also be a vital guide for practitioners seeking to identify and execute context-specific entrepreneurial opportunities for women in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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.