Contemporary Business Challenges and Opportunities of doing business within the African Context : Key insights for the fourth Industrial Revolution (SIBRM5)
• Dr. Eugine Tafadzwa Maziriri (MaziririET@ufs.ac.za) University of the Free State, Department of Business Management (South Africa)
DETAILS
AIM OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE This proposed International Journal of Business Research and Management) special issue focuses on different business issues that are confronted by African entrepreneurs and small businesses. It also seeks to present the opportunities that have emerged for businesses as a result of the fourth industrial revolution. Research on Africa’s business potential has sparked much interest from scholars that focus on different fields of African business.
BACKGROUND TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE Doing business is important for economic development because it is positively associated with a multitude of externalities of economic development, including the creation and sharing of wealth; employment opportunities; balanced economic and regional prosperity; exports; living standards; gross domestic product (GDP); and GDP per capita (Adu-Gyamfi, Kuada & Asongu, 2018). The African continent is lagging behind in all these characteristics relative to other regions of the world, reflecting inherent challenges to doing business on the continent that restrict entrepreneurship and favorable business environments required for investment and economic prosperity (Tchamyou, 2017).
Second, amid a paradigm shift towards market-based growth, improved political and economic governance, significant challenges to doing business in Africa are still evident and economic governance as well as a conducive global environment that has set the pace for Africa’s recent economic growth resurgence (Tchamyou, 2018). Although some avenues of economic prosperity are articulated by the underlying progressive characteristics, they do not however, provide adequate justification for the type of holistic and sustainable development that the continent needs. Businesses in Africa are also faced with overwhelming social, political and economic risks that are hindered by long term investment decisions and the introduction of policies for sustainable growth.
Business problems in Africa are often driven by discrepancies in established literature. Accordingly, the literature on the ease of doing business in Africa has predominantly focused on, inter alia: the cost of doing business (Eifert, Gelb & Ramachandran, 2008); legal challenges to doing business (Taplin & Synman, 2004); determinants of doing business in East Africa (Khavul, Bruton & Wood, 2009); the rate at which business cycle synchronization is affected by trade (Tapsoba, 2010); the long-term poverty-mitigation impact of doing business (Mensah & Benedict, 2010); motivations underlying the intentions of students to become entrepreneurs (Gerba, 2012); gender-related factors (Bayraktar & Fofack, 2018); the relevance of social networks and human capital (Kuada, 2009);role of the knowledge economy in doing business (Tchamyou, 2017); the relevance of doing business in inclusive human development (Asongu & Odhiambo, 2019) and linkages between information technology, openness, governance and entrepreneurship (Asongu, Nwachukwu & Orim, 2018).
To the best of our knowledge of the guest editors, there are still deficiencies in studies on the challenges and prospects of doing business in contemporary African development literature. Hence this special issue complements the engaged literature by providing papers on the challenges as well as opportunities of doing business in Africa, precisely within the 4IR context. The goal of Industry 4.0 is to attain an advanced level of operational effectiveness and productivity, as well as a higher level of automatization. Thus, this special issue is also centred on identifying the role of Industry 4.0 in order to promote sustainable business performance among African Businesses such as Small and Medium Enterprises. The guest editors welcome both empirical and conceptual papers, and would welcome papers on the afore-discussed topic.
POSSIBLE THEMES AND TOPICS * The role of technology in overcoming constraints to entrepreneurship, innovation and business development in Africa * Technology adoption for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) as a result of 4IR * Product innovation success and failure in Africa * How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected African Business in today’s post-modern era * Expectations concerning company’s operational effectiveness and business model increase due to industry 4.0. * This Special Issue also welcomes papers focused on the latest challenges and opportunies on Agric- Business, Consumer Behaviour, Banking Services and Customers in Africa
