- **Coordination** issues, including wait-and-see behavior relative to others in the network, and either weak or lack of interoperability and equal access across markets (linked to standards and regulation).

- **Trust** issues, linked to possible shortcomings at the government legal and regulatory levels (e.g., lack of appropriate liability laws, online consumer protection, e-signature, personal data protection, cybersecurity), and at the platform operator level (e.g., third party certifications, simple dispute resolution procedures).

# **3. Data**

This section presents the data and main patterns of use of DTs by microenterprises. The first subsection presents general characteristics of the data. The second sub-section presents differential uses of DTs by microenterprises owned by men and women, disaggregated further by younger versus older owners.

# **3.1 General characteristics**

The Research ICT Africa (RIA) After Access business survey is focused on micro-size enterprises. The RIA survey was implemented during 2017-18. The data set analyzed in this paper includes 3,325 observations covering seven Sub-Saharan African countries, namely Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania.<sup>6</sup> The RIA survey also covers Rwanda and Uganda, but sufficient missing data on variables of interest have precluded its inclusion in this paper.<sup>7</sup> There is considerable heterogeneity across enterprises according to their sector(s) of operation (Table 1).<sup>8</sup> Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of surveyed microenterprises are active in trading activities and almost one-quarter (24 percent) are active in other services.<sup>9</sup> Almost one in ten firms (9 percent) is active in producing agricultural products,<sup>10</sup> while less than one in twenty (4 percent) is manufacturing products.

Formal enterprises are defined as legally registered either at the national registrar general or country-level revenue authority, at the local authority or municipality, or both. Informal enterprises have neither national nor local registration. Most firms are informal: more than two-thirds (73

> 6 The ranking in terms of number of observations per country, from highest to lowest, is Nigeria (567), Senegal (517), Tanzania (500), Ghana (499), Mozambique (430), Kenya (421), and South Africa (391).

> 7 More than half of Uganda data had missing values for sales (necessary to calculate two of the performance variables); and the age of the owner was missing for 92 percent of observations. There was no information on the export status of enterprises for Rwanda (whether they had customers abroad, a performance variable as well), as well as on owner’s age, whether the enterprise had non-local buyers, and whether the manager has vocational training.

> 8 In the survey, firms were asked whether they are producing agricultural products, manufacturing products, selling goods/trading, and/or providing other services. Roughly 11 percent of respondents indicated that they do more than one of these, for instance producing vegetables as well as selling them as traders.

> 9 Other services include activities such as basic tailoring and more sophisticated fashion design services, hairdressing and other beauty services, hotel and restaurant services, mechanical and repair services, transportation services, as well as mobile money transfer services.

10 Agricultural products include vegetables (e.g., cabbage, cassava, tomatoes), crops (e.g., cocoa, maize, rice, sugarcane), livestock (e.g., cattle, chickens, goats, sheep), and fishing.

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