Digital Value Chain Reconfiguration, Supplier Ecosystem Transformation, and Strategic Renewal in Southern African Mining

The Southern African mining industry stands at a decisive juncture as digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous systems, and blockchain, converge with established value chain architectures. This paper examines how digital value chain reconfiguration reshapes supplier ecosystem dynamics and compels strategic renewal among mining firms in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, drawing on evidence that is deliberately balanced across all four jurisdictions rather than concentrated in any single market. Building on an integrated theoretical framework that combines the Resource-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities Theory, and Global Value Chain theory, and following a structured literature review and purposive case-selection methodology, the paper develops a causal, feedback-sensitive model linking digital adoption to supplier ecosystem transformation and strategic repositioning. The analysis identifies four reconfiguration trajectories: automation-led disintermediation, data-driven supplier integration, platform-mediated ecosystem orchestration, and sustainability-linked value chain redesign, and evaluates their differential and at times contradictory implications for incumbent mining firms and supplier communities, weighing documented successes against documented failures, including cybersecurity breaches, workforce displacement, and inconsistently enforced beneficiation commitments. Particular attention is given to cybersecurity exposure, AI ethics and algorithmic accountability, data governance, and platform dependency as intensifying risks of digital reconfiguration, and to the strategies by which small and medium-sized suppliers can be included in, rather than excluded from, the digital transition. The paper's original theoretical contribution is an integrated, feedback-sensitive model of the evolution of digital governance in resource-dependent supplier ecosystems, from which strategic renewal frameworks and policy recommendations are derived for mining firms, governments, and development finance institutions across the region.

digital transformation; value chain reconfiguration; supplier ecosystem

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