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.

This book examines the links between public policy and Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technological developments in Africa. It broadly assesses three key areas – policy entrepreneurship, policy tools and citizen participation – in order to better understand the interfaces between public policy and technological transformations in African countries. The book presents incisive case studies on topics including AI policies, mobile money, e-budgeting, digital economy, digital agriculture and digital ethical dilemmas in order to illuminate technological proliferation in African policy systems. Its analysis considers the broader contexts of African state politics and governance. It will appeal to students, instructors, researchers and practitioners interested in governance and digital transformations in developing countries.

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.

Africa's contributions to global technological advancements are often overlooked, with many scholars claiming that the continent has yet to contribute significantly to digital technology. This misconception stems from a need for more understanding and recognition of Africa's indigenous knowledge and its role in shaping the modern world. The education curriculum inherited from colonialism must differentiate Africa's values and culture from Western ideals, leading to a devaluation of Africa's mineral wealth in technological advancements. Additionally, the impact of historical events such as the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism on Africa's indigenous knowledge remains largely unexplored, further contributing to the misunderstanding of Africa's technological contributions. Contributions of Africa's Indigenous Knowledge to the Wave of Digital Technology: Decolonial Perspectives offers a comprehensive exploration of Africa's indigenous knowledge and its crucial role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). By taking a decolonial perspective and examining the literature on African Studies, the book aims to shed light on Africa's significant contributions to digital technology. Through a qualitative research design and an exploratory approach, the book will collect and analyze data from secondary sources to showcase Africa's rich technological advancements and history of innovations.

The competitiveness of companies plays an important role in developing their effectiveness. But technology provides a strong competitive advantage to the companies and helps in achieving the sustainable development. This edited collection discusses various methods by which a firm can create a competitive advantage in a dynamic situation. The book highlights the strategies in global decisions related to changing business models and processes in the innovation era. The contributions by authors take readers through emerging trends in innovation that can support managers in making more strategic decisions, while reducing reconciliation and report preparation. In a hyper-competitive environment, this book will assist researchers and management practitioners in appreciating new strategic sources. Radical strategies and competitive innovation, sustainable development, competitiveness, SMEs, direct and indirect investment, delocalization of businesses, and value creation will all be discussed in depth. Overall, this volume will help readers understand the importance of real-time smart business sources to gain a competitive advantage. Competitive Advantage, Strategy and Innovation in Africa provides essential information on contemporary issues and challenges in management and change strategies. It will serve as a reference for academicians, researchers, and practitioners interested in the rapid transformation in the management sector due to technological advancement and high competition between companies.

This edited volume seeks to examine how enterprises in Africa can utilize digital technologies and innovations in creating value for their customers and clients in order to increase effectiveness and efficiency. Through social media, businesses are increasingly reaching and engaging their customers in several ways and so enterprises in Africa must harness the opportunities in the digital space if they want to remain competitive, earn profit, and meet their customers’ needs. Accordingly, this book looks at how digital technologies are helping shape the financial, educational, and advertising sectors in Africa. As digital technologies raise challenges, the chapters that follow will discuss ethical and social practical frameworks to effective digital business in Africa. This volume promises to fore both theoretical underpinnings, and practical implementations of digital technologies in the African business context.

This book is a fascinating treatment of ethics, governance, and anti-corruption initiatives from a public sector management perspective and is especially relevant for an Africa looking to benefit from the recently launched Africa Continental Free Trade Area. This second part of a two-volume set spans a wide array of contemporary issues. Chapters explore the challenges related to building an ethical climate in Africa’s public sector, what the imperatives of anti-corruption initiatives should be in Africa, ethical orientation in promoting project performance, corporate governance in Zimbabwe’s local authorities and the role of NGOs/CSOs in promoting public sector accountability. On digitalisation, the book discusses the management of Tanzanian public service integrity in the digital era and digital innovation towards sustainable public sector administration in Africa. Public sector management, ethics and corporate governance academics, students, managers and policy makers will find this edited volume critical to improving public sector management in Africa.

Plastic pollution is one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century that requires innovative and varied solutions. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, this book brings together interdisciplinary, multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder perspectives exploring challenges and opportunities for utilising digital innovations to manage and accelerate the transition to a circular plastic economy (CPE). This book is organised into three sections bringing together discussion of environmental conditions, operational dimensions and country case studies of digital transformation towards the circular plastic economy. It explores the environment for digitisation in the circular economy, bringing together perspectives from practitioners in academia, innovation, policy, civil society and government agencies. The book also highlights specific country case studies in relation to the development and implementation of different innovative ideas to drive the circular plastic economy across the three sub-Saharan African regions. Finally, the book interrogates the policy dimensions and practitioner perspectives towards a digitally enabled circular plastic economy. Written for a wide range of readers across academia, policy and practice, including researchers, students, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), digital entrepreneurs, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies, policymakers and public officials, this book offers unique insights into complex, multilayered issues relating to the production and management of plastic waste and highlights how digital innovations can drive the transition to the circular plastic economy in Africa. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book examines the landscape of sustained investment in research and innovation in Africa, which are critical for development. This cutting-edge analysis is based on empirical evidence and the author’s experience in managing health and related innovations on the continent and globally. It concludes, for the first time, that African innovation is largely driven by the principles of Social, rather than Technological innovation. The significance of this finding and the need to optimize, scale and sustain this dominant innovation is addressed in various chapters that analyze the status, challenges and opportunities. Particularly, the financing, collaboration and coordination patterns for these activities on the continent show a fragmented ecosystem that is largely dependent on external donors and aid. The importance of supportive policies, leadership and venture mechanisms that incentivizes public and private entities to innovate is further exemplified by the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book proposes mechanism to address identified challenges.

In the last two decades social entrepreneurship has grown in energy and impact as entrepreneurial spirit has increasingly turned to finding solutions for social, cultural and environmental issues. As social entrepreneurship has grown in popularity, so too has its academic study. A Research Agenda for Social Entrepreneurship brings together contributions from developing paths in the field to signpost the directions ahead for the study of social entrepreneurship.