Breaking barriers to integrated digital Delivery (IDD) adoption in the construction Industry: Evidence from five Central African countries

Integrated Digital Delivery (IDD) remains critically underadopted in Central African construction industries despite mounting infrastructure demands. This study investigates barriers to IDD adoption across Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo using survey data from 560 construction professionals. Employing fuzzy synthetic evaluation, weighted correlation network analysis, and exploratory factor analysis, the study identifies 30 barriers across eight dimensions. Key findings reveal: (1) financial barriers rank highest (index: 3.829), driven by risk perception rooted in historical project failures rather than capital scarcity; (2) stakeholder opposition and technical complexity function as network hubs with cascading effects on financial, organizational, and supply chain barriers; (3) legal barriers show unexpectedly low significance (index: 3.635), reflecting limited regulatory enforcement. The study extends the TOE and DOI frameworks, incorporating institutional voids, colonial-legacy impacts, and infrastructure deficits, yielding a Contextual Barrier-Mitigation Framework for resource-constrained economies, alongside incremental digital maturity pathways and phased AI-enabled interventions.