UNDERSTANDING THE DRIVERS OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICTs) ADOPTION BY KENYAN SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES (SMES).

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a major role in developing and developed economies in job creation and diversification of economic activities. Despite all these, SMEs are faced with many challenges such as non-adoption of information communication technologies (ICTs), poor infrastructure and inaccessibility to credit facilities. This notwithstanding, many studies have been done on ICTs adoption by SMEs but mainly on the importance of ICTs on enterprise competitiveness. Understanding the drivers, barriers and strategies to ICTs adoption by SMEs especially in the less developed countries, and in particular by Kenyan SMEs, have not been addressed. To fill this gap, this paper will address the drivers and ICTs tools used by Kenyan SMEs. To achieve this, a stratified random sample of 380 owner/managers of SMEs in three provinces in Kenya was selected for the study, namely Nairobi, Rift Valley and Nyanza provinces.