Digital Platforms, Fintech and Market Access for African Small and Medium Enterprises: A Theoretical Framework of Intermediation, Dependence and Value Capture
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68854/5zd9g382Keywords:
digital platforms, fintech, small and medium enterprises, market access, platform dependence, value capture, financial inclusion, e-commerce, AfricaAbstract
Digital platforms and financial technology (fintech) services promise African small and medium enterprises (SMEs) access to customers, payments and credit that traditional intermediaries rarely provided. Existing research, however, is largely empirical and adoption-oriented; it documents access gains but seldom explains who captures the value that access creates, and platform-strategy theory has rarely been applied to settings in which platforms also supply payments and credit and offline markets remain large. This study aims to develop a theoretical framework explaining when platform and fintech participation raises or lowers the share of value captured by African SMEs. It adopts a conceptual, theory-building design that combines an integrative review with propositional theorising. The evidence base comprises 57 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2023 and 2026, drawn from platform economics, digital intermediation and ecosystem governance, and research on fintech adoption and SME outcomes in Africa, each verified against its Crossref publisher record and screened for retractions; the sources were coded thematically and synthesised through resource-dependence and bargaining logic, with the Nigerian payments and e-commerce landscape as the anchoring case. The analysis distinguishes three functions platforms perform for small firms (matching, trust provision and financing) and shows that each creates a corresponding dependence: algorithmic dependence on ranking, reputational dependence on non-portable ratings, and informational dependence on the platform's data about the firm. A bargaining model specifies SME bargaining power as decreasing in multi-homing cost and increasing in data portability and the value of offline alternatives, and yields seven testable propositions, including a rise-then-compress trajectory for SME margins as platform-specific assets accumulate and a bundling effect whereby super-apps combining commerce and finance capture a larger share of SME surplus. Nigeria's 2023 cash shortage illustrates how a collapse in offline alternatives shifted bargaining power toward digital intermediaries. The study recommends payment and wallet interoperability, portability of firm-level transaction and reputation data, proportionate competition rules on self-preferencing, parity clauses and fee transparency, and deliberate multi-homing and collective organisation by SMEs.
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