African small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are no longer peripheral participants in the global digital economy. Across the continent, businesses are increasingly digital by design—using online platforms for commerce, cloud services for operations, and cross-border digital tools to reach regional and international markets. According to the World Bank, SMEs account for over 90 percent of businesses and more than 80 percent of employment across Africa, making them central to economic growth and digital transformation.

Yet despite this reality, global digital policy frameworks continue to disadvantage African SMEs. This failure is not due to a lack of innovation or entrepreneurial capacity, but a persistent misalignment between how global rules are designed and how African digital businesses actually operate.

Policy Designed for Mature Markets

Global digital policy has largely evolved from the regulatory experiences of developed economies. Frameworks governing data protection, cybersecurity, digital trade, and platform governance tend to assume mature institutions, reliable infrastructure, and firms with the capacity to absorb compliance costs.

For many African SMEs, these assumptions don’t hold. Businesses often operate with limited legal and technical support, rely on shared or third-party digital infrastructure, and function in environments where electricity, broadband, and secure hosting remain uneven. Policies built on assumptions from mature markets can make compliance less a matter of responsibility and more a matter of feasibility.

The OECD has consistently highlighted the disproportionate compliance burden that regulatory complexity places on smaller firms, particularly in developing economies. Despite this, global digital standards continue to be calibrated primarily around large enterprises, with SMEs considered late in the process, if at all.

Data Protection: Strong, but Misaligned

GDPR-inspired frameworks have become the dominant global reference point, influencing legislation across Africa. While strong data protection is necessary to protect users and build trust, many SMEs struggle to meet obligations such as impact assessments, consent management, and breach notifications—not due to indifference, but because compliance costs compete directly with core business survival.

Global policy discussions rarely interrogate these outcomes. Instead, compliance gaps are often framed as domestic capacity issues, rather than signs that the policy design itself may not scale effectively in different economic contexts.

Cross-Border Trade and Structural Barriers

African SMEs are inherently cross-border. Fragmented domestic markets and limited scale make regional and international trade essential. However, global digital trade rules—covering data flows, online payments, digital identity, and consumer protection—remain biased toward established markets.

Access to global payment systems illustrates this clearly. Risk-based exclusions by international financial service providers often limit African SMEs’ ability to process cross-border payments efficiently, increasing costs and delays.

At the policy level, African SMEs remain underrepresented in shaping digital trade norms. As a result, rules governing commerce are often defined without meaningful input from the businesses most affected by them.

Platform Governance and Private Regulation

Large digital platforms increasingly act as private regulators, setting marketplace rules, content moderation standards, and enforcement mechanisms. These policies frequently lack contextual sensitivity to African languages, business practices, and consumer behavior, creating outcomes that appear inconsistent or disproportionate.

African SMEs regularly face account suspensions, service restrictions, or content takedowns with limited explanation or recourse. While multistakeholder models like ICANN show the value of inclusive policy development, African SME participation remains constrained by resources, leaving businesses with little influence over the rules that shape their digital markets.

Infrastructure and Compliance Realities

Global digital policy often assumes stable connectivity, continuous monitoring, and secure infrastructure. In many African contexts, these conditions are aspirational rather than guaranteed. Policies that require rapid breach notifications, strict uptime guarantees, or continuous monitoring effectively penalize SMEs for gaps beyond their control.

This disconnect reinforces a recurring pattern: African SMEs are assessed against standards they had limited opportunity to shape and lack the infrastructure to consistently meet.

Representation: The Missing Link

Despite repeated commitments to inclusive policymaking, African SMEs remain underrepresented in global digital governance. Participation is dominated by governments, multinational corporations, and well-resourced civil society organizations. Regional initiatives, including AfCFTA’s emerging digital trade framework, are important, but their effectiveness depends on global policy frameworks adapting to regional realities rather than overriding them.

Without sustained SME representation, global digital policy will continue to reflect the priorities of those already best positioned to stay at the table.

Toward Fit-for-Purpose Policy

The central challenge is not whether African SMEs should comply with global standards, but whether those standards are designed to function effectively across diverse economic and infrastructural contexts. Evidence from OECD, World Bank, ITU, and AfCFTA points to the need for:

• Proportional compliance models
• Flexible implementation pathways
• Structured participation mechanisms for SMEs from developing economies

African SMEs can also act as early indicators of where global digital policy places disproportionate strain on smaller businesses worldwide. Ignoring these signals risks entrenching frameworks that scale efficiently for large firms but poorly for the businesses driving employment, innovation, and market dynamism.

From my work across Nigeria and Africa, I’ve seen first-hand how these policy gaps affect SMEs’ ability to scale, innovate, and compete both regionally and globally. Until global digital policy frameworks are recalibrated to reflect operational realities across these regions, African SMEs will remain constrained by systems that rely on their participation for growth, yet remain ill-suited to support their resilience and long-term competitiveness.