Bouba Ismaila, John Beneke
Abstract
Worldwide, countries and communities are undergoing significant change due to digital transformation. In developing countries, this provides unprecedented opportunities for economic growth and social inclusion involving all genders. Yet inequalities in digital tools access, digital literacy, and government policy execution still exist in these countries. The present review investigated the relationship among digital transformation, gender integration, and economic growth in emerging nations by a bibliometric analysis of literature published between 2000 and 2025. To find important trends, obstacles, and possibilities, we examined 64 carefully chosen papers from the Scopus database after all studies deemed irrelevant to this review or lacking all main keywords or their variations (39), and duplicates (18) were removed from the original search result of 121. The use of Scopus was justified by the fact that most of the articles found on this search engine are also found on other search engines like JSTOR, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, etc. The retained papers were saved in a BibTex form, then exported to Bibliometrix portal through R studio platform. The data was subjected to different analyses that produced graphs and tables for further analysis by the authors and, in some cases with the assistance of AI tools such as Gemini or Claude AI. The results show that although the amount of study on digital transformation is increasing, especially since COVID-19 pandemic (2019-2022), studies that focus on gender are still under-represented. Terms like “digital literacy”, “financial inclusion”, and “gender” draw attention to important areas, but there are still gaps in how structural impediments and societal norms are addressed. To guarantee equitable digital growth, the study emphasizes the necessity of gender-inclusive policies, digital capacity-building programs, and digital context-sensitive technology solutions. Additionally, to empower women in the digital economy, recommendations include giving sector-specific interventions, participatory methodologies and cross-sectional research in digitalisation top priority. By outlining the changing research landscape and promoting laws that close the digital gender gap, this paper adds to the conversation on inclusive development.