Information Science Reference Africa's Platforms and the Evolving Sharing Economy

Product Description 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 exhibit communal living characterized by sharing. Literature has shown that the introduction of ICTs to everyday life and business has redefined the concept of sharing and also evolved an entirely new spectrum of sharing - both in the individual and business settings. Alongside this new spectrum is a new disruptive business model known as the platform business model. While the subject continues to attract interest globally and locally, there is a need to deepen the understanding of this subject to validate global perspectives on platforms as economic drivers within the African context. Africa's Platforms and the Evolving Sharing Economy is an essential reference source that explores evidence-based platform dynamics and their impact on Africa as a continent leveraging technology for economic development. The book also delves into current data protection and privacy issues and the policies and regulations that could impact the design, deployment, and use of platforms for businesses. Featuring research on topics such as digital design, e-commerce, and enterprise information systems, this book is ideally designed for government officials, economists, business executives, managers, academicians, students, researchers, and global finance professionals. About the Author Immanuel Ovemeso Umukoro is a doctoral student in Information Systems at the Africa Regional Centre for Information Science, University of Ibadan, and also a researcher at Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University, both in Nigeria. He holds both bachelor and master degrees in information science from Delta State University, Abraka and University of Ibadan respectively. His research experience cuts across digital financial services, financial inclusion and sustainability, business intelligence and analytics, social informatics, human resources/knowledge mapping and management, consumer information needs' analysis, digital libraries, development information systems and sources, collection development and management of information resources, ergonomics and man-machine interaction, web resources analysis and management information/decision support systems. Immanuel is a chartered member of the the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) and the Librarians' Registration Council of Nigeria (LRCN).Raymond is a Research Fellow at the Lagos Business School Nigeria, where his research focuses on the institutional and policy challenges in the evolution of the internet economy and technology innovation in developing countries. He is also a Research Consultant with regional ICT policy and regulation think-tank for the Global South – Research ICT Africa (RIA), conducting multidisciplinary research on digital governance, policy and regulation and the facilitation of evidence-base to inform policy making for improved access, use and application of digital technologies for social and economic development in Africa. Asides several policy and industry project reports, Raymond co-authored the paper – Platforms in Sub-Saharan Africa: Startup Models and the role of Business Incubation, which was published by the Journal of Intellectual Capital in 2018. Raymond is currently a doctoral student at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance (NMSPG), University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa where his thesis interrogates platform competition policy in the multi-sided telecommunications market, and its investment and innovation imperatives for social welfare in developing economies.