The Entrepreneurial Opportunity in Malawi’s Digital Transformation: Modelling Public Information Management Systems for Development

The digital transformation in developing countries offers significant entrepreneurial opportunities, especially in public information management systems for socio-economic development. This study explored the opportunities existing in IMS creation and adoption in Malawi. The study used the extended Technology, Organizational, Environmental, and Individual Conceptual Framework. The study design was cross-sectional and utilized quantitative methods to examine the factors that promote or hinder IMS development. Data was collected from 426 respondents in IMS organizations through two questionnaires, with 63 respondents focusing on IMS creation and 363 on IMS adoption. The predictors of the response variables creation and adoption of IMS were; perceived Benefits, Innovation, Cost, IT Ability, External Support, Firm Size, Competitor Pressure, Tech Readiness, IT Experience, and Customer Pressure. Only four variables were significant in predicting IMS creation, which are; Perceived benefits at all the levels (1 to 5), Innovation at levels 2, 3, 4 and 5, Cost at level 4 and Competitor pressure at level 5. A respondent at Innovation level 2 was more than one times (1.766) more likely to create IMS than the one without any innovation. At level 3, the respondent was 1.615 times more likely to create IMS than the respondent without innovation. The respondent at level 4 was 1.922 times more likely to create IMS than the one without any innovation. At level 5, the respondent was more than 2 times (2.001) likely to create IMF than the respondent without any innovation. At level 4, cost was 1.016 times less likely to create IMS than the one who did not want to incur any cost. A participant with a competitor pressure at level 5 was 1.442 times more likely to create an IMS compared to the one without any competitor pressure. However, only perceived benefits were a significant predictor (P<0.01) of IMS adoption. A respondent who perceives the benefits of IMS at level 5 was 1.286 more likely to adopt the IMS than one who has not perceptions of the benefits of IMS. These findings provide valuable insights for organizations wishing to implement IMS processes.