Preliminary investigations into the business ecosystem in rural South Africa: An e-Business perspective

Abstract

The current expansion of mobile technologies penetration and usage in emerging regions represent an opportunity for leveraging ICT applications adoption by rural communities. Businesses nowadays utilise this opportunity to implement m-commerce to communicate with customers directly via mobile devices, regardless of time and location. Despite the availability of mobile connectivity and a relatively high penetration of mobile devices in rural South Africa, the use of mobile phones is merely for voice-communication purpose. M-commerce applications can help small scale enterprises operating in rural areas to conduct business efficiently and cost-effectively by cutting transaction costs through the use of mobile data communication. We hereby represent the ecosystem of small businesses in rural South Africa with associated challenges and demonstrate how those challenges can be addressed by exploiting capabilities offered by mobile data communication. This helps suggest an m-commerce solution for rural areas currently being investigated.