Journal of African Development

Business Intelligence (BI) is a very crucial facilitator of sustainable business growth, especially by the innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the increasingly data-driven business environment. This article will be discussing the strategic importance of BI in promoting sustainability-based performance and decision making among the SMEs. A convenience sampling of 150 SME stakeholders was conducted through the use of a quantitative research design to gather data. The article is devoted to the most important dimensions of BI, such as generation and analytics, sustainability performance metrics, competitive advantage, operational efficiency, high-quality decisions, and lifelong learning and innovation. The coefficient of concordance was used by Kendall in determining the degree of agreement the respondents had with respect to the relative importance of these factors. The results show that there is a statistically significant difference among the priorities of BI dimensions, which means that SMEs have different strategic orientations. Although the importance of operational and decision-support capabilities are more emphasised, sustainability measurement and continuous learning components are given relatively less focus. The findings emphasize the versatile use of BI in the context of the sustainable development and demonstrate the necessity of context-related approaches to BI that should be developed to meet the specific needs of innovative SMEs. The research enhances the literature that is already emerging on BI-inspired sustainability and also provides useful lessons to SME managers and policymakers..