Digital Channels Catalysing Businesses in Fast-Expanding African Markets

This study investigates how digital technologies advance the dual goals of profitability and social impact in fast-expanding markets and the role of social networks in upscaling these markets. Digital financial services take on many forms, including long-distance remittances, micropayments, and other mobile financial services such as digital banking, digital transfers, and digital payments. Social networks, webs of social ties that bind individuals together based on factors such as friendships, common interests, and shared professional activities become even more dynamic when they evolve into social ecosystems, which are complex forms of overlapping social ties that interact with others in other social networks at the same or different times. Our research context is the fast-expanding markets of Ghana and Kenya. Digitisation in these markets has opened up several marketing opportunities in multiple tech hubs, working spaces, and accelerators that provide innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship in order to ensure sustainability. To answer our research question, we first conducted rigorous and systematic secondary research to expose key constructs related to the goals of profitability and digitisation of financial services firms. We followed up with a qualitative study in the form of phenomenological interviews conducted with 15 dyads of financial services providers and their microenterprise customers in Ghana and some microenterprises in Kenya. We contribute to the upscaling framework for financial services to meet the dual goals of profitability and social sustainability.