Replication Data for Chapter 5: How Digital Enterprises Fill Institutional Voids in Sub-Saharan Africa: Case Study of South Africa

The search and selection of participants for the data collection started in February 2020. However the process was reviewed and put on hold in the wake of the COVID-19 and lockdown in South Africa. When it became clear that easing the lockdown had no specific date the data collection strategy was reviewed and re-launched in June, 2020 (with a follow-up in July, 2021).
The request for an interview contained a description of the research purpose, type of data required from the company and consent form that guarantees confidentiality of the data.
Considering the COVID-19 restrictions and availability of the target entrepreneurs and/or firms, the research design provided flexible options to possible participants to respond in interview and/or questionnaire completion. This means a combination of three ways of data collection; interview only, questionnaire completion and interview(where a participant agrees to complete a questionnaire and be contacted later, when appropriate, for further information) and questionnaire only (where the participant agrees to complete a questionnaire but declined further contact for physical, phone interviews and/or writing). In all, upon further review of their nature of work, 19 DEs had companies that fit the description of the enterprises of interest and provided data that was deemed relevant to the study.
The anonymised text is available for viewing if strictly necessary, but cannot be shared. This is in line with the confidentiality understanding reached with the digital enterprises.
Thematic qualitative analysis was applied to analyse the text.