COVID-19 triggered major economic downturns, high unemployment rates, and a push towards digital transformation.
COVID-preneurs pushed on with their dreams of becoming their own bosses at a record pace. Between an ongoing pandemic, global supply chain shortages, and businesses still struggling to keep their doors open, interest in digital entrepreneurship continued to remain strong through the end of 2021.
For aspiring digital entrepreneurs, there are more opportunities to start a business than ever before. This includes having easy access to relatively inexpensive technology, such as using a laptop to launch apps for small businesses. There are also fewer capital restraints when acquiring funding – such as easier access to small business loans, crowdfunding, and eager angel investors – as investors and lenders want to encourage the founding of new businesses that might have previously been unable to qualify for loans under stricter guidelines. These would theoretically take the economic place of those businesses lost in the wake of COVID-19. New business owners will also encounter less competition due to pandemic-related business closures.
The rise in remote work flexibility during the pandemic was a stepping-stone to digital entrepreneurship for many. Some people likely found that more time spent working from home allowed them to commit more time toward developing a business plan. In addition, many people who were able to work from home for the first time quickly realized it was their preferred way of working.
It is easy to see why so many new entrepreneurs are venturing out on their own despite the troubled economic climate of the pandemic age – but it is important to recognize that starting your own online business doesn’t come without risks, regardless of how strong your niche market might be right now.
Africa cannot afford to lose its homegrown enterprises. The continent must nurture and protect the homegrown digital enterprises with the highest growth and innovation potential by investing in early-stage start-ups and supporting enterprise support organizations, including incubators, accelerators, to deliver quality services to these enterprises. By 2030, about 230 million jobs across the continent will require some level of digital skills. The fourth industrial revolution is expected to cause technological disruption that will require a highly skilled labour market. However, only 10% of Africans are currently employed in high-skill digital jobs, the lowest share of any region globally.
The versatility of digital technologies has made them a significant source of opportunities for entrepreneurs to create new ventures. Digital entrepreneurs build on the distinctive features of digital technologies to create new combinations of social and material resources to generate value for users. They typically build their business models on digital technologies’ ability to connect multiple processes and form platforms that generate new possibilities for economic and social interactions.
In response to the rise of digital entrepreneurship, REGENT Business School students focus on traditional entrepreneurship concepts as a foundation and then further develop their knowledge to integrate with concepts related to the digital entrepreneurship field. Students also interact with the main technologies, methods, components, and applications used in digital entrepreneurship to provide them with an in-depth understanding of the impact of digital entrepreneurship on organisations and societies globally.
By Dr Sayed Rehman
Senior Academic, Regent Business School
