Digital Pentepreneurship in Nigeria: Challenges and Opportunities

While digital entrepreneurship has received increasing scholarly attention, no study has explored the challenges and prospects of digital Pentepreneurs—an emerging area in religious entrepreneurship. Pentepreneurship has grown in Africa and other parts of the world. However, a recent wave in Nigeria is the growing digitization of Pentecostal religious services, which has ushered in a new dimension of competition among Pentecostal bodies in the country. By applying the resource-based view, a qualitative study involving start-up digital Pentepreneurs in the Nigerian South was conducted. Data were subjected to content and thematic analysis. Findings indicate that the challenges faced by digital Pentepreneurs include internet network failures, weak regulatory systems, cost of digital operation, cyber insecurity, and political/cultural influence. However, several opportunities (e.g., the possibility of reaching a wider/unreached audience with the gospel, the growing size of digital worshippers, an opportunity to secure foreign partnership/financial support, the opportunity to capture and retain the youth, and the opportunity to internationalize) were identified. This chapter makes theoretical and practical contributions that will be of value to various stakeholders.