Digital entrepreneurship

Digital entrepreneurship among women in Africa is growing. Emerging digital platforms used by women entrepreneurs or the companies founded or co-founded by such entrepreneurs are not very transparent due to a lack of easily accessible data and research studies. This entry argues that there is a need for greater access to the data produced through digital footprints. Such data is increasingly available in developed economies but not yet for countries in the Global South. Two applications for data sourcing demonstrate how modern data sources grow our understanding of women entrepreneurs. First, big data compiled by a Nigerian e-commerce platform enabled researchers to use anonymized data to identify differences in behavioural patterns between men and women entrepreneurs across four African countries. Second, research on women founders in South Africa illustrated how combining interview data with data sourced from a big data platform contextualized the identification and growth of entrepreneurial opportunities.