The Role of E‐commerce for the Growth of Small Enterprises in Ethiopia

Abstract

AbstractSmall enterprises strive to survive and grow in the business they are involved. They make efforts to utilize different resources and technologies available to this end as long as it is affordable and productive. Information Communication Technology or e‐commerce are among those technologies that take the front line. This paper aims to define an adoption level of e‐commerce in small Ethiopian enterprises and show that their business requirements and perceived benefits of e‐commerce are related to business growth. It takes five small enterprises involved in import and export business to perform case study research on the issue and examines their utilization level of the technology. The findings show that small enterprises in the country have low levels of e‐commerce utilization due to: (1) the scarcity of infrastructure development and expertise in the area, and (2) barriers created by government policy and bank regulations. However, this study found good understanding of the business opportunities and benefits that could be exploited from e‐commerce.