Electronic Commerce Challenges and Opportunities for Emerging Economies: Case of Egypt

The information and communication technology evolution is affecting many nations around the world through one of its emerging transformational platforms, the digital economy. Therefore, electronic business with its different sub and parallel categories such as electronic commerce, electronic government and electronic learning and more is increasingly becoming the way to do business, learn, govern and trade in the 21 century. It reflects a concrete example where emerging technologies can contribute to socioeconomic development and growth for different societies. However, there are multiple challenges that exist that are creating a digital divide between the haves and have nots that call for more inclusion and more effective mechanisms to deploy the advantages of information and communication technology so that emerging economies capitalize on the potentials of the much promising global marketspace. This paper describes the development of electronic commerce in Egypt since the mid-1990s with a focus on the last few years post the uprising of 2011 and its implications on the marketplace including the challenges faced that relate to social, technological, financial, cultural and legal issues and the efforts exerted by different stakeholders including the government, the private sector and the civil society to diffuse electronic commerce in Egypt. The paper demonstrates the potential of the digital marketspace and the opportunities it presents to emerging economies and the associated lessons learned.