By Pervious Chileya
Director of Marketing, Events and ICT, African Corporate Governance Network
I come to governance from an unusual direction. Before I sat among directors and chief executives from across the continent, as the youngest member of that table, my work was on the ground: inside small businesses, market enterprises, and growing firms, helping them move from habit and memory to structure and systems. That vantage point shapes everything I believe about where Africa's economic future will be won or lost.
It will not be won in the largest companies alone. It will be won in the small and medium enterprises that anchor our economies, and in whether they are brought into the digital age deliberately or left to stumble into it.
What the World Has Learned About Digital Transformation
Across the globe, the lesson of the past two decades is consistent.
Economies that digitised their small business sectors did not simply become more efficient. They became more visible.
Once transactions, inventory, and customer relationships were recorded digitally:
- Businesses could access credit based on their own trading history.
- Governments could design policy on real data rather than estimates.
- Supply chains could seamlessly connect small producers to larger buyers.
A second lesson is less often stated: digitisation that succeeds is rarely about the technology. Successful programmes invest as heavily in process, training, and trust as they do in software. Where tools were introduced without changing how people work, the result was cost without change.
The African Reality
Our starting point is different, and in some ways more promising.
Much of Africa leapfrogged fixed-line infrastructure and went straight to mobile. Mobile money is now part of daily life for millions of traders who have never held a bank account. In that sense, the payment layer of our local markets is already digital.
Behind the payments, however, very little has changed.
My assessment from years of fieldwork is that most small enterprises have digitised how money moves, but not how the business is run:
- Stock is still counted by memory.
- Business and household money still share one purse.
- Prices are set by instinct rather than by knowing true costs.
- Procedures live in one person's head, so the business stops when that person does.
When such a business fails, it is usually not for lack of customers. It fails because nothing underneath it could sense trouble early or adjust.
The tools on offer often make this worse. Much business software is designed for well-resourced markets and assumes reliable power, affordable data, formal accounting knowledge, and dedicated IT staff. Our enterprises operate with intermittent electricity, expensive bandwidth, and owners who wear every hat. When a system does not fit, it is abandoned and the owner concludes that technology is simply not for businesses like theirs.
Then there is language. The vocabulary of business management and technology is a barrier in itself. Terms like “working capital,” “audit trail,” “data governance,” and “going concern” describe ideas any trader instinctively understands, but the words keep them out of reach. We have made modern business sound far more complicated than it actually is.
What I Believe
"The small enterprise is not a lesser version of a corporation. It is a complete business, with capital, stock, suppliers, customers, and risk. It deserves the same disciplines that keep large institutions alive, delivered at its own scale and in its own language."
- Digitisation must follow understanding, not precede it. The sequence I have seen work is simple:
- Diagnose how the business really operates.
- Decide what actually matters to its survival and growth.
- Only then fit a tool to that reality.
- Reversing that order is how most failed projects begin.
- Stewardship is character as much as competence. How we manage what is entrusted to us is a matter of character. As a believer, I see stewardship as the heart of good business: being faithful with a little is how we learn to be trusted with much. A market trader keeping honest records of her stock is practising the same virtue a board practises over a balance sheet.
What I Intend to Contribute at the Continental Table
Sitting in the room where governance direction is set for a continent, I see my contribution in four dedicated areas:
1. Policy
I will argue for digitisation policy that is proportionate and staged. Compliance requirements should match the capacity of the business they apply to, and the path from informal to formal should be a ramp, not a cliff. Policymakers should treat support for small business record-keeping and process as economic infrastructure, just as roads and power are. Well-designed incentives, such as easier access to credit for businesses with verifiable digital trading histories, will do more to formalise the sector than penalties ever will.
2. Frameworks
Boards and institutions need a common, practical way to assess where an enterprise stands on its digital journey. I would like to help develop a simple maturity model:
A framework like this lets supporters, lenders, and regulators meet each business where it is, rather than demanding it leap to where they wish it were.
3. Innovation
I will push for technology designed for African conditions: offline-first systems that synchronise when a connection returns, interfaces in local languages, low data consumption, and shared platforms that market associations or cooperatives can run together to spread costs among members. The goal is not the most advanced system, but the one a small business will still be using a year later.
4. Terminology
This may be the most overlooked contribution of all. I want to help build plain-language, locally translated explanations of core business and technology concepts:
- "The business purse and the family purse are two different purses."
- "Put aside enough to restock after your worst week before you spend on anything else."
- "Write down how you buy, price, and sell, so someone you trust could run things for a week without you."
None of these dilutes a principle. Each makes one usable. If governance and technology are to reach our local markets, they must first speak their language.
Why This Belongs in the Boardroom
Some will ask why a continental governance conversation should concern itself with market stalls and small workshops.
My answer is simple: these enterprises employ most of our people, feed most of our households, and supply much of what larger firms depend on. When they fail, the effects travel up every value chain. When they grow, so does everything built on them.
Boards shape procurement, partnerships, and investment. Policymakers shape the environment in which every enterprise either adapts or falls behind. If both understand how small businesses actually operate, and what it truly takes to bring them into the digital economy, Africa can digitise in a way that includes the many rather than rewarding the few.
That is the work I want to carry into every room I am invited into: to translate the discipline of good business into terms the market understands, and to translate the reality of the market into terms the boardroom cannot ignore.