From Home-Market Foundations to Transnational Reach: A Contextual Model of African Service-Firm Internationalisation

This study examines how established African service-sector firms progress from strong domestic positions to regional and wider transnational reach. Using longitudinal multiple-case evidence from MTN, FirstBank and Shoprite, it traces how firms deploy, test, and reconfigure capabilities built in the home market across diverse institutional environments. The findings show that domestic scale, managerial experience, organisational routines, financial capacity, technology and market knowledge formed important foundations for later expansion. Regionalisation served as both a scaling and learning process, while entry into more distant or institutionally complex markets required reconfiguration of capabilities. Retrenchment in MTN and Shoprite further shows that internationalisation is neither linear nor irreversible. The study develops a contextual pathway linking home-market foundations, capability accumulation, regional scaling and learning, capability reconfiguration and transnational reach, moderated by strategic intent, host-country institutions, digital capability and service characteristics.