What is it about?
Yes! The expansion of digital technologies does not only seem unstoppable, it also opens up opportunities to transform African societies. Adoption is an opportunity for transformation but not a guarantee. We need to ask new questions to evaluate the subtle changes that are happening.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
The current attention is glued to adoption rates. To be sure, it feels good to see those numbers and the opportunities for transformation that they represent. However, rarely do assessments go beyond adoption rates. What does the transformation of African societies in the digital age actually mean? What are they transforming towards?
Perspectives
In this article, we begin to break down the changes and trends in the economic, organizational, political, social and cultural domains. More research - both big and thick data - is needed to document and evaluate the changes. In particular, we need to be attuned to the potential negative externalities a "blind" implementation of digital technologies may produce. With this article, we seek to set a stepping stone that can help start efforts to sketch out an Afrocentric transformation model for the digital age that will benefit the many.
Tim Weiss
Stanford University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Making Sense of Africa's Emerging Digital Transformation and its Many Futures, Africa Journal of Management, October 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/23322373.2017.1400260.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
