Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa: New Frontiers, Prospects, Opportunities and Challenges for Small Digital Enterprises

In 2020, Friedereci, Wahome and Graham published a sterling and thought-provoking multi-case study-based book titled “Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa: How a continent is escaping Silicon Valley’sSilicon Valley long Shadow.” While acknowledging the capacity of African digital firms to contribute to positive socio-economic development, their scholarly piece also laments the skewed and high concentration of digital entrepreneurship in large urban cities, the stunted and mostly linear growth of African digital enterprises, their inability to scale internationally, difficulties in attracting venture capital and inability to disrupt traditional industries. Following and building on this work, we map the future of digital entrepreneurships by forecasting the range of technologies and phenomena that hold promise for the future for Africa’s digital enterprises including how these can be exploited to promote sustainable digital entrepreneurship on the continent. While some of these technologies are already mainstream concepts, platforms, applications and tools in advanced Western economies, they have remained on the horizon and are envisaged to take centre stage in the future on the African continent. These technologies and phenomena are home-grown innovation hubs (i.e., ihubs), Web 3.0 start-ups, platform firms (“platifirms”), touchless smart technologies, crypto hedge funds for digital asset management, inclusive digital economies and green certified cities. Drawing on the Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Bottom of the Pyramid Innovation, this chapter argues that leveraging sustainable digital entrepreneurship necessitates tapping into these technologies and developments including the accommodation of small digital firms at the bottom of the pyramid by mainstreaming these technologies and exploiting these phenomena in the operations of these firms.