Editorial: The digital transformation of Africa

Abstract

Two years ago, we released a call for papers for a new special issue on the digital transformation of Africa. As we said at the time, we had already seen evidence that some transformative technologies, notably mobile payments between individuals, had become broadly adopted in the African continent. At the same time, we also observed that the full potential of digital technology had not been fully harnessed in some other areas. Thus, although there were at that time a few success cases, digital transformation remained an elusive idea for the most part in Africa. The special issue was thus organized to encourage the undertaking and submission of research that would illustrate the full richness of digital transformation in Africa. We emphasized that we were seeking empirical papers that demonstrated digital transformation in practice. We also emphasized that authors should be careful to contextualize their research, and to include indigenous elements within the theoretical exposition.