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on Africa |
| By: | Kohnert, Dirk; Preuss, Hans-Joachim |
| Abstract: | A 'democratic recession' is to be observed, which is not restricted to Sub-Sahara Africa but spreads worldwide since the beginning of the 21st century. Instead of concentrating on the outward appearance of a democratic form of government, greater attention should be paid to good governance and the stealthy erosion of democratic institutions, even in formerly shining examples and African 'model democracies' like Benin and Senegal. It went along with the rise of populist new nationalism and lack of regard of the concerned for the need to defend democracy actively. The lingering process of the decline of democratic institutions is driven by increasingly poor governance and disregard for the rule of law and transparency, which has been especially pronounced in African countries since the early 2000s. On the other hand, recent examples of African social movements that successfully campaigned for a democratic renaissance in Africa and elsewhere are promising indicators of progressive social forces that counteract global trends of the resurgence of right-wing nationalism and autocratic rule. |
| Keywords: | Benin,Democratization,Senegal,Togo,democratic recession,social movements,governance |
| JEL: | F35 N47 N97 Z13 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:205259&r=all |
| By: | Castillejo, Clare |
| Abstract: | Establishing free movement regimes is an ambition for most African regional economic communities, and such regimes are widely understood as important for regional integration, growth and development. However, in recent years the EU's migration policies and priorities in Africa - which are narrowly focused on stemming irregular migration to Europe - appear to be in tension with African ambitions for free movement. This paper examines how the EU's current political engagement and programming on migration in Africa is impacting on African ambitions to establish free movement regimes. It focuses first on the continental level, and then looks in-depth at two regional economic communities: The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Horn of Africa, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The paper begins by examining how free movement has featured within both EU and African migration agendas in recent years, describing how this issue has been increasingly sidelined within the EU's migration policy framework, while receiving growing attention by the African Union. The paper then discusses the impact of EU migration policies and programmes on progress towards regional free movement in the IGAD region. It finds that the EU is broadly supportive of efforts to establish an IGAD free movement regime, although in practice gives this little priority in comparison with other migration issues. The paper goes on to examine the EU's engagement in the ECOWAS region, which is strongly focused on preventing irregular migration and returning irregular migrants. It asks whether there is an innate tension between this EU agenda and the ambitions of ECOWAS to fully realise its existing free movement regime, and argues that the EU's current engagement in West Africa is actively undermining free movement. Finally, the paper discusses the differences between the EU's approach to migration and free movement in these two regions. It offers recommendations regarding how the EU can strengthen its support for free movement in both these regions, as well as more broadly in Africa. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:diedps:112019&r=all |
| By: | Akintoye V. Adejumo (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria); Simplice A. Asongu (Yaoundé, Cameroon) |
| Abstract: | Globally, investments in physical and human capital have been identified to foster real economic growth and development in any economy. Investments, which could be domestic or foreign, have been established in the literature as either complements or substitutes in varying scenarios. While domestic investments bring about endogenous growth processes, foreign investment, though may be exogenous to growth, has been identified to bring about productivity and ecological spillovers. In view of these competing–conflicting perspectives, this chapter examines the differential impacts of domestic and foreign investments on green growth in Nigeria during the period 1970-2017. The empirical evidence is based on Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Granger causality estimates. Also, the study articulates the prospects for growth sustainability via domestic or foreign investments in Nigeria. The results show that domestic investment increases CO2 emissions in the short run while foreign investment decreases CO2 emissions in the long run. When the dataset is decomposed into three sub-samples in the light of cycles of investments within the trend analysis, findings of the third sub-sample (i.e. 2001-2017) reveal that both types of investments decrease CO2 emissions in the long run while only domestic investment has a negative effect on CO2 emissions in the short run. This study therefore concludes that as short-run distortions even out in the long-run, FDI and domestic investments has prospects for sustainable development in Nigeria through green growth. |
| Keywords: | Investments; Productivity; Sustainability; Growth |
| JEL: | E23 F21 F30 O16 O55 |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:agd:wpaper:19/078&r=all |
| By: | Tweneboah Senzu, Emmanuel |
| Abstract: | The desire of the modern economies is to be well structured and planned to innovatively attract foreign direct investment, which is the prime interest of governance of developing economies. This underpins the choice of the conference theme, “Building a resilient African economy through innovative financing, trade, and Investment for sustainable development of the continent”, with the effort of this paper is to project a skeletal ex-post situation of Ghana’s financial market which is synonymous to most quality performing financial market in developing countries on the continent of Africa with subjective recommendations for aspired progressive direction. |
| Keywords: | Banking & Finance, Financial Sector, Macroeconomics, Monetary Policy, Central Bank, Foreign Direct investment |
| JEL: | E22 E26 E5 G21 G28 |
| Date: | 2019–11–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:96783&r=all |
| By: | Angelo D'Andrea; Nicola Limodio |
| Abstract: | This paper provides empirical evidence on the effect of high-speed internet on financial technology and banking in Africa. Our test combines data on 551 banks and 28,171 firms with the staggered arrival of fibre-optic submarine cables in Africa. High-speed internet promoted private-sector lending by banks, and credit and sales by firms. These results are consistent with an extensive adoption of financial technologies, like real-time gross settlement systems (RTGS), lowering transaction costs in African interbank markets. We find that liquidity management considerably changed for banks being weak interbank users prior to high-speed internet. In fact, such banks lowered their internal liquidity hoarding by 10%, increased interbank transactions by 40% and expanded lending by 37%. Analogously, firms in countries with weak pre-existing interbank markets presented stronger effects at the cable arrival. These results are consistent with high-speed internet promoting financial technology adoption, liquidity and credit. |
| Keywords: | Fintech, Banking, Investment, Financial Development |
| JEL: | G2 G21 O16 O12 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp19124&r=all |