From Exclusion to Empowerment: Rethinking Digital Transformation for Women Entrepreneurs

This study examines how digital transformation shapes women entrepreneurs’ movement from exclusion to empowerment within Nigeria’s evolving enterprise landscape. Guided by Affordance Theory and a Critical Realist philosophical assumption, it explores how digital technologies such as social media, mobile payments, and online marketplaces create possibilities that are only realized under specific atmosphere and institutional conditions. Using a qualitative multiple-case study design, thirteen (N = 13) women entrepreneurs were purposively selected across diverse sectors and settings. Data were collected through semi-structured open-ended questions and analyzed through inductive coding, axial theming, and retroductive reasoning to uncover the generative mechanisms linking context, affordance perception, and empowerment outcomes. Findings reveal a stratified pattern of empowerment shaped by both enabling and constraining mechanisms. Working-capital scarcity and infrastructure unreliability function as structural bottlenecks that limit the actualization of digital affordances, while peer-based learning, training, and networked visibility mediate these constraints. Algorithmic opacity and inconsistent platform governance emerged as hidden structures reinforcing unequal visibility and dependence on paid promotion. Where enabling conditions aligned finance, connectivity, and institutional support women experienced tangible empowerment outcomes such as increased market reach, confidence, and decision autonomy. The study contributes by demonstrating that digital affordances are not self-actualizing; they operate through layered mechanisms embedded in economic, technological, and socio-cultural structures. Empirically, it offers contextual evidence of how women exercise agency within and against these constraints. Practically, it recommends blended finance for working capital and data costs, peer-driven digital training, and transparent platform governance to translate digital access into durable empowerment.

Women Entrepreneurs; Digital Transformation; Affordance Theory

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