Type: article
Abstract: Digital platforms in development contexts are usually theorized as intermediaries that optimize existing exchange. How platforms construct the sociotechnical conditions for exchange, and what this enables for previously excluded participants, remains underspecified. Drawing on a retrospective longitudinal case study of Hello Tractor, a Sub-Saharan African agritech platform, based on 40 interviews across two field visits and extensive secondary data, we develop a process account of sociotechnical market construction. We show that each of five phases generates a specific output the next requires as input, in a sequence the platform could not successfully invert. We introduce generative market infrastructure: a pattern in which the constructed infrastructure produces its own entrepreneurs, who ascend a self-replenish ladder and generate innovations that extend the market beyond the platform’s design. The paper specifies the causal micro-mechanisms of inter-phase enablement and shows that platform-led construction can distribute entrepreneurial capacity while retaining centralized control over infrastructural resources.
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222989843