Digital practices of e-waste businesses in the Global South – The case of Cape Town South Africa

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Large amounts of e-waste in the Global South are handled by small enterprises and survivalist self-employed, often under precarious conditions. To overcome these challenges, the deployment of information and communication technologies (ICT) is seen as a possible solution. Indeed, different studies on small enterprises in the Global South have outlined the benefits of ICTs for developing digital practices, like digital payment, digital marketing and digital knowledge exchange as they can lead e.g., to reduced transaction costs, better supply chain connections and market access (e.g. Mbuyisa and Leonard 2017). On the other side, different scholars (e.g. Murphy et al. 2014) argue that, the use of ICTs does not help small businesses to overcome the structural inequalities and the related problems. However, given the current rapid spread of modern forms of ICT usage (in particular, smart phones and social media), new studies indicate that digital practices have now significantly changed (e.g. towards complex social media based practices and platform economies; Tang and Konde 2020). Therefore, earlier conclusions (e.g. by Murphy et al. 2014; Mbuyisa and Leonard 2017) need to be revisited. Furthermore, studies on ICT usage in the e-waste economy are rare, and may differ from other small business economies, as they depend strongly on up-to-date knowledge (Corwin 2018). Studying e-waste businesses therefore holds strong potential for early analyzing new digital practices and their related outcomes. By using the example of e-waste economies in South Africa, this project follows the overall research question: To what extent and under which conditions are digital practices influencing e-waste businesses in the Global South? To do this, this project uses a mixed method approach based on primary quantitative and qualitative data which are jointly collected and analyzed with partners in the region.