Assessing E-commerce Readiness and E-Skills of Developing Nations' SMMEs in the Era of Global Digital Economic Evolution: A Case Study of the Bono Region, Ghana

The aftermath of the COVID-19 global pandemic has seen a surge in businesses across the globe's uptake of ICT tools as one of the many tools to operate and manage their operation, cementing the already in-motion shift towards the e-commerce era. Businesses partaking in the e-commerce evolution require not just the right ICT infrastructure but also the necessary e-skills for business entrepreneurs to profile their business ventures to woo potential customers in the global marketplace's opportunities the e-commerce presents in the digital age. The new Bono Region in Ghana is confronted with socio-economic challenges like unemployment. With the basic necessary ICT tools and e-skills, SMME entrepreneurs in the new region can implement e-commerce to grow their businesses and contribute meaningfully to the new Bono Region socio-economic developmental efforts in terms of job creation. Thus, this paper aims to assess the readiness of SMMEs' in the new Bono Region to participate in e-commerce. Quantitative, quota, and purposive sample techniques were employed in the form of a questionnaire to gather empirical data from 85 participants. The findings indicated that although state-of-the-art ICT infrastructure is required by businesses to engage in e-commerce safely and efficiently, in hindsight, the sampled participants have the basic necessary ICT tools (96.8% own mobile phone) to engage in suitable e-commerce activity. However, e-commerce involves the application of ICT such as social media platforms, and the low ICT literacy (47.2%) among the participants contributes as a factor to the study participants' non-effective usage of social media platforms to engage in e-commerce to realise entrepreneurial growth amid the global digital economic evolution.