Pragmatic Solutions to E-business Challenges in West-African Developing Countries

E-business adoption rate has been extremely low mainly in West-Africa mainly because of the digital divide. Nevertheless, given the economic situation of these countries, e-business still remains a viable option. The main objective of this paper is to provide a pragmatic approach for implementing e-business in West-African developing countries. We first identified some common challenges such as insufficient ICT infrastructures, logistics and banking systems and then based on what is already available as infrastructure, we proposed alternatives to be used in an e-business solution designed to help governments address issues like corruption and price fluctuations that continue to plague markets in those countries. The paper also tackles the deployment challenge by proposing wireless technologies as alternatives to costly ICT infrastructures and contributes to promote e-business adoption among developing countries in West-Africa.