The Future of Enterprise Systems in Africa: Bleak or Bright?

Abstract

Africa is gradually getting involved in the implementation of enterprise resource systems, notwithstanding the challenges. Lack of standardized processes, infrastructure, support and maintenance systems have been identified as key issues/challenges with Africa in the implementation of IT based systems, which include enterprise system. The untapped potentials and a wide range of untouched market for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems lie within Africa. Great care must be taken by ERP vendors and developers, implementing enterprises and other stakeholders to harness these resources by first of all, making sure that the implementation environment, skilled IT staff, support and maintenance systems are well set. This paper explored the future of enterprise resource planning systems in Africa and has suggested areas that need the attention of both vendors and implementation enterprises. The study was exploratory in nature and made use of secondary information from textbooks and journals. A desk research approach was employed where literature material on Enterprise Systems implementation process and challenges were examined. Based on the outcome of the review, an evolutional framework was proposed for ERP implementation for Africa. Proper implementation of the framework would yield the needed result. Future research was recommended to empirically test and refine the framework and explore the relationships among the various variables.