Digital Transformation in African SMEs: Emerging Issues and Trends

The scope of e-commerce is continuously growing, touching more and more platforms, gadgets, sectors, and marketplaces. The aim of this chapter is to identify electronic commerce areas for SMEs’ success in developing countries like Africa. Ecommerce can be primarily business-to-business or business-to-customers. The success of SMEs’ e-commerce adoption is based on virtual reality, augmented reality, social media, and analytics. One important piece of advice for small and medium-sized business owners is to start using social media and build websites to market their goods. SMEs’ owners in Ghana have the opportunity to foster economic growth and social progress through providing jobs, social services, and welfare to local communities.

M-commerce, or mobile commerce, is transforming how business is done online in the modern era of business. Unfortunately, Ghana's “small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)” do not use mobile commerce very much. This study aims to assess the body of knowledge on the issues, preventing SMEs from adopting m-commerce and to further the investigation into those issues. The results illustrate how unstable variables are when seen in terms of how they affect one another, their connections, and themselves. The components of the proposed framework are discussed, and the way they interact with one another emphasizes how difficult it is to prevent m-commerce adoption. This outcome emphasizes the importance of thorough data analysis as opposed to problem isolation. The results also showed that “perceived risk” was a significant barrier, highlighting the possibility that different perspectives on the adoption concept may have a significant impact on the result and the existence of additional factors. 

Many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) today exploit big data despite having insufficient resources to do so. The literature is clear that huge corporations throughout the world are increasingly adopting Big Data Analytics as a means of gaining a strategic edge. However, the literature shows that SMEs are not using this technology to its full potential due to factors including a lack of experience and the associated costs. The goal of this article is to examine the difficulties SMEs have when utilizing big data in Africa. The study's findings pointed to a lack of funding, clear information, complicated data, advanced big data analytics tools, reliable infrastructure, compelling business propositions, clear data privacy and culture norms. Big data analytics by SMEs help them face and overcome obstacles and reap the benefits of BD to boost their competitive edge and, ultimately, the economy of their country and Africa as a whole. 

The use of digital channels by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) for consumer engagement is changing as a result of advancements in information and communication technologies and subsequent adoptions, notably by customers. According to market research, marketers continue to trust email marketing more than conventional digital marketing. Few studies have been done on email marketing and how SMEs may use it to succeed as a business, and those that have been done, have all been in developed nations with well-established telecommunications infrastructures. This book chapter aims to investigate email marketing among SMEs in attaining business success in order to fill the knowledge gap and expand the body of information already existing in this field. By synchronizing the use of particular marketing tools and resources, such as email marketing, SMEs can maintain the competitive edge of an existing product(s). By sending emails to current or future clients, email marketing aids in the promotion of any business online. However, SMEs must be aware of the numerous challenges and complexity around General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance in order to help SMEs adhere to email and data compliance required for business relationships built on trust and data protection and privacy. 

Characteristics of big data include its ability to be both diverse and quick, as well as trustworthy. The vast amounts of existing medical information about patients can be analyzed using BDA methods, yielding insights that can be used to strengthen the SME industry. The purpose of this chapter is to identify and explain factors influencing the adoption of big data amongst SMEs in Africa. This chapter evaluates the factors from theories and models of technology acceptance (TAM, UTAUT, TTF, and TEO). All these models and theories are discussed along their sub-factors for scholars and practitioners to understand big data adoption and utilization issues.

Globally, digitalization is changing economies and influencing how businesses create and sell their products. It has the potential to increase creativity, productivity, and economic growth. This chapter set out to ascertain what technological resources are required by small business executives in order to effectively leverage IT to boost company performance. IT has multiple benefits for SMEs/MSMEs including essential for the development of a company, for looking into emerging markets, for merchandise demand, for productivity and income, for staff development, and for the use of remote techniques of labor. It is concluded that the technology has an influence on SMEs’ performance. 

Adopting and utilizing social media for conveying information to stakeholders can be made possible by SMEs at little cost. There is little research on the correlation between the use of social media and the success of SMEs, despite the fact that access to and sharing of information is a key factor in the success of SMEs. The purpose of this chapter is to identify and explain the motivating factors behind SMEs' adoption and use of social media. The factors that were identified in the literature were based on theories applied in SMEs perspective in Africa. We employed the TOE and TAM models for the chapter. These factors included environmental, cost, comparability, ease of use, usefulness, and relative advantage. It was concluded that social media technology is good for SMEs to make an impact in the world of business, hence, needs to be adopted by SMEs’ managers or owners.