Introduction
African economies have been making attempts to leverage development through technology deployments. While traditional pipe businesses have been the dominant drivers of these economies, a new class of business model now seems to disrupt the incumbent. The growth and adoption of the Internet as a communication and knowledge-sharing platform has resulted in complementary technological and transformational developments including, but not limited to cloud computing, social media, mobile technology, and big data. These digital transformation concepts have created new business principles such as the on-demand economy and a new sharing economy. While the on-demand economy has primarily grown out of industrialized economies, especially North America, Africa has been known to communal living characterized by sharing. Literature has shown that the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to everyday life and business has redefined the concept of sharing and also evolved an entirely new spectrum of sharing - both at the individual and business settings. Alongside this new spectrum is a new disruptive business model known as the platform business model. Evidence suggests that Facebook, Google, Airbnb, Amazon, Alibaba, Rent-A-Runway, etc are platform businesses that are either two or multi-sided business models.
Platforms can be seen across several industries such as finance, entertainment, e-commerce, logistics, agriculture, health, education, hospitality, etc. David-West, Umukoro, and Onuoha (2018) argue that research on platforms is quite nascent with limited literature. To this end, little is known, much of which is not yet validated. While the subject continues to attract interest globally and locally consequent on the relevance and roles played by platforms in driving economies around the world, there is need to deepen understanding of this subject to validate global perspectives on platforms as economic drivers within the African context. In 2014, the Centre for Global Enterprises (CGE) launched a survey-based research project on the emerging platform economy, acquiring regional data on platform development from China, North America, Europe, India and sub-Saharan Africa (Evans & Gawer, 2016). From an African perspective, David-West & Evans (2016) had earlier explored platforms as it relates their emergence, locations, typologies, models, scope and partnerships. Despite these efforts at understanding the African platform landscape, not much is documented especially as it relates to platform entrepreneurship, contribution to economic development such as digital jobs creation, etc.
