Bridging the Digital Divide: Assessing the Interplay of Digital Literacy, Infrastructure, and Policy in Shaping Sierra Leone’s Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

 Author (s)

Alusine Boys Conteh & Peter Jesse Saxo-Decker

Abstract

Sierra Leone’s digital entrepreneurship ecosystem is emerging against a backdrop of significant structural constraints. National data place internet penetration at roughly 25.1 percent of the population, mobile penetration at 50.3 percent, and smartphone ownership among adults at 28.53 percent, with the country ranking 38th of 47 African nations on the International Telecommunication Union’s ICT Development Index. Drawing on digital entrepreneurial ecosystem theory, digital divide theory, and institutional theory, this study develops three hypotheses and tests them with a survey of 200 digital and digitally enabled entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs in Freetown, Bo, and Makeni, supplemented by illustrative contextual interviews with entrepreneurs and key informants. Digital literacy was rated effective by 35% of respondents, infrastructure by 30%, and the policy and regulatory framework by only 12.5%, while half of respondents (50%) could not characterise the policy environment at all. Overall assessments of the ecosystem were the most negative of the four measures, with 40% identifying a clear gap and only 10% describing conditions as effective. Chi-square goodness-of-fit tests and 95% confidence intervals show that these distributions differ significantly from an even spread of opinion (all p < .01) and that policy uncertainty is significantly higher than uncertainty about literacy or infrastructure. The findings suggest that policy and regulatory clarity, more than raw infrastructure or literacy alone, may be the most under-addressed dimension of the ecosystem. The study concludes with theoretical contributions, evidence-linked applications, and recommendations for the Ministry of Communication, Technology and Innovation (MOCTI), the Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI), and development partners on sequencing future ecosystem-building investment.

Keywords: Digital entrepreneurship, Digital divide, Entrepreneurial ecosystem, Digital literacy, ICT infrastructure, Policy and regulation, Sierra Leone.

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Cite This Article:

Conteh, A. B. & Saxo-Decker, P. J. (2026). Bridging the Digital Divide: Assessing the Interplay of Digital Literacy, Infrastructure, and Policy in Shaping Sierra Leone’s Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem, International Journal of Science and Business, 54(1), 131-145. https://doi.org/10.58970/IJSB.2723

About Author (s)

Alusine Boys Conteh (Corresponding Author), Business Education Unit, Faculty of Business & Entrepreneurship, Ernest Bai Koroma University of Science & Technology, Port Loko, Sierra Leone. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-7376-3390

Peter Jesse Saxo-Decker, Master of Professional Accounting, Shanghai National Accounting Institute, Shanghai, China.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.58970/IJSB.2723

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