Global e-commerce and african participation:a critical assessment

Indeed, it has been asserted that the most fundamental resource in the modern economy is knowledge while the most important process of economic development is learning. Therefore, e-commerce is an important contributor to the learning process which shapes economic performance. In fact, it provides improved access to structured business information as well as offering opportunities for innovation when embedded in production processes. Although inequalities of access to information have been shown to adversely affect market performance in african countries; the internet(by virtue of its relatively low investment and configuration costs as well as interactive global reach) potentially could play a pivotal role in enabling increasing connectivity and visibility at national, regional and global-scale value chains. In the light of this background, this paper assessed the dynamics of e-commerce in Africa so that a new insight may be shed on the ways in which e-commerce is transforming the organization(and operation)of value chains. However, to be able to develop appropriate policies, decision makers need to be aware of the implications of the emerging transformation process.