Nicolas Friederici

The Impact of Connectivity in Africa: Grand Visions and the Mirage of Inclusive Digital Development

Corporations, development organisations and governments have launched ambitious programmes to ‘connect the unconnected’, reasoning that this creates economic growth and inclusive development. This paper contrasts these actors’ discourses with evidence from academic research. The evidence suggests a highly uneven economic impact of Internet connectivity across geographies and social strata. The analysed sources of discourse (African ICT policies and reports by international organisations) instead propose Grand Visions of connectivity, attributing a self‐evident positive, widespread, and transformational impact to the Internet. We discuss technological determinism, acontextual modernism, and optimistic simplism as underlying this contrast, calling for more reflexivity towards the opportunities of ‘digital development’.

Digital Control in Value Chains: Challenges of Connectivity for East African Firms

Abstract In recent years, Internet connectivity has greatly improved across the African continent. This article examines the consequences that this shift has had for East African firms that are part of global value chains (GVCs). Prior work yielded contradictory expectations: firms might benefit from connectivity through increased efficiencies and improved access to markets, although they might also be further marginalized through increasing control of lead firms. Drawing on extensive qualitative research in Kenya and Rwanda, including 264 interviews, we examine 3 sectors (tea, tourism, and business process outsourcing) exploring overarching, cross-cutting themes. The findings support more pessimistic expectations: small African producers are only thinly digitally integrated in GVCs. Moreover, shifting modes of value chain governance, supported by lead firms and facilitated by digital information platforms and data standards are leading to new challenges for firms looking to digitally integrate. Nevertheless, we also find examples in these sectors of opportunities where small firms are able to cater to emerging niche customers, and local or regional markets. Overall, the study shows that improving connectivity does not inherently benefit African firms in GVCs without support for complementary capacity and competitive advantages.

How Nascent Technology Entrepreneurs Organize: The Community Assembly Process

This paper asks how entrepreneurs organize, and how they come to be organized in communities. The paper reviews literature on regional entrepreneurial networks and organizing in incubators, and finds that prior research has alluded to the role of communities, but neglected to develop explicit theory on the origins of meso-level social structures. To build such theory, in-depth case study data (including 119 interviews with 133 participants) were collected during field studies in Kigali, Harare, and Accra from September-December 2014. Six entrepreneurial communities anchored in local coworking spaces are used as comparative case studies. The paper finds that coworking spaces are unique organizational actors, in that they enable community formation by working as social enclosures, locational fix points, and symbols of a purpose. Based on within-case process tracing and cross-case pattern matching, the paper then theorizes the assembly process: coworking spaces assemble previously distant and different actors into entrepreneurial communities. Assembly consists of three mechanisms: convening (creating occasions for interactions), interconnecting (matching complementary actors), and activating (stimulating mutual concern among community members). Assembly theory highlights the need for more studies of entrepreneurial organizing processes, and addresses important meso-level theory gaps in research on the coordination and organization of entrepreneurship.

More Art than Science? Exploring the Roles of Technology Innovation Hubs for Urban Regions in Developing Countries

Technology innovation hubs (TIHs), an emerging phenomenon in developing countries, offer a combination of business incubation services and open convening spaces, events, and innovation competitions. To understand TIHs’ roles and identify pathways for future research, I analyzed data from interview and focus groups with 220 stakeholders of seven TIHs in five countries, using an informed grounded theory approach. Theory from economic geography (on regional advantage, regional innovation systems, and clusters) provided the most useful perspectives, which I related to themes emerging from the data. I found that TIH stakeholders saw themselves and the TIH as part of an “innovation ecosystem,” with ecosystems growing and maturing in distinct patterns over time. Ecosystem quality was understood as the completeness of complementary actor groups. TIHs functioned predominantly as linkage builders between ecosystem actors and actor groups. TIHs promoted innovation ecosystems in particular by creating visibility for small enterprise and individual innovators, by leveraging and pooling larger organizations’ resources, and by feeding “buzz” in the ecosystem. TIHs had multi-stakeholder governance and engagement models, leading to both advantages and frictions. For future research, I propose a theoretical framework of innovation networking, integrating literature from economic geography and network science. I conclude that future TIH analysis ought to examine TIHs’ shaping of innovation networks (as the relational structure of innovation ecosystems) for the largest potential theoretical and empirical contributions.