ABSTRACT
Landline telecommunication never really penetrated African markets, so mobile telecommunication offers a unique opportunity to observe a rapid shift in both the structure of social networks and the degree of information asymmetry, which can directly impact the rate and nature of entrepreneurship in the region. Mobile technologies can therefore impact entrepreneurship due to three major reasons. It reduces asymmetry of critical information necessary to recognize, refine, and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities, thereby improving inputs to the entrepreneurial search process, and impacting the process outputs and outcomes, i.e. growth-orientation of the opportunities, and subsequently its contribution to regional economic growth. Focusing on a process model of entrepreneurship, the people urge stakeholders to consider the behavior of market actors and agents, search costs, and price dispersion dynamics through technological innovations in mobile telecommunication and explore ways to further close the digital divide. Exploring the information perspective is timely given the rapid and recent interest in the role of the knowledge economy in Africa.
