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on Africa |
| By: | Takpara, Moukaila Mouzamilou |
| Abstract: | The article investigates the contribution of trade facilitation to productivity growth in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. We include four trade facilitation indicators (i.e., physical infrastructure, ICT, business and regulatory environment, border, and transport efficiency) as explanatory factors for productivity growth measured by both total factor productivity and labor productivity. The empirical evidence is based on both Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (POLS) and the Instrumental Variable Two-Stage Least squares (IV-2SLS) in a sample of 29 SSA countries over the period 2004-2017. The main results from the study show that trade facilitation contributes positively and significantly to total factor productivity as well as labor productivity in SSA. Based on this finding, SSA countries need to improve border procedures as well as the business and regulatory environment to generate substantial productivity gains and boost the competitiveness of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), given the job creation potential of MSMEs. |
| Keywords: | Trade facilitation, Productivity, Sub-Saharan Africa, 2SLS |
| JEL: | F13 F14 O11 O47 |
| Date: | 2025–08–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:125818 |
| By: | Dr Ayodele Odusola |
| Abstract: | This lecture-report maps Africa’s development finance landscape across four instruments—ODA, debt, PPP/private capital, and Domestic Resource Mobilization (DRM)—and argues that while global liquidity is ample, Africa’s progress is constrained by aid shortfalls and design flaws (e.g., ODA still below the 0.7% GNI commitment) and by a structurally costly financing environment. It foregrounds DRM as the pillar with greatest control yet most headroom—African tax-to-GDP averages 16.6% versus the Addis target of 24%—and diagnoses leakages (inefficient spending, illicit financial flows, and redundant tax expenditures) that together drain about US$204 billion annually; remedies include BEPS curbs, effective international tax cooperation, and fast-tracking Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax adoption. The report highlights remittances’ resilience (US$669 billion to LMICs in 2023) but urges lowering Africa’s remittance costs (≈8%) toward the 3% SDG target and scaling diaspora bonds to channel savings into productive investment. It calls for a fit-for-purpose global architecture—bigger, more flexible MDBs; orderly, faster sovereign debt workouts with disaster clauses; and mechanisms to re-channel SDRs—while correcting credit-rating biases that inflate African borrowing costs. Finally, it advances an Africa-centered playbook—industrialization anchored in AfCFTA, SEZs and clusters; patient-capital SPVs for SMEs; and scaled innovative finance and blended facilities—so that public, private, and diaspora capital are aligned with national “development bargains” to finance the SDGs and Agenda 2063 sustainably. |
| Keywords: | Financial Economics, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, International Development |
| Date: | 2025–01–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:undpar:369058 |
| By: | Sandambi, Nerhum |
| Abstract: | Many countries develop through the increase of their economic resources, which naturally exist in most countries. On the other hand, some evidence shows that countries can develop through fiscal decentralisation, which promotes this growth through regional growth via significantly viable economic transformation. In Africa, for example, federalist countries such as Nigeria and South Africa show greater capacity for regional transformation through indicators of great relevance in themselves. Evidence also shows, for example, greater economic transformation through fiscal federalism. South Africa, for example, has less significant decentralisation but greater capacity to collect tax revenues. The analysis shows that Nigeria, for example, has a fiscal base in only a few states, with 10 states naturally having greater capacity for economic transformation, which suggests that there is less complexity in tax revenue collection, thus restricting economic development particularly in these states. Political decentralisation in African federalist countries does in fact lead to greater political turnover and greater political plurality among its political actors, which are naturally the political parties. Although there is de facto fiscal decentralisation, particularly in Nigeria and Ethiopia, there is nevertheless a greater lack of economic development in all territories, with the exception, for example, of states with greater economic concentration such as Lagos and Abuja. |
| Date: | 2025–08–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:w5s2x_v1 |
| By: | Anifowose, Oladotun Larry; ISSA, Abiodun G.; FAGBEMI, Adebimpe Saheed |
| Abstract: | Agricultural sector has been identified as the engine room for economic transformation for most African countries, which plays an important role in their economic transformation process via huge revenue generation, employment creation, source of foreign exchange and food supply to mentioned a few. The impact of agriculture sector on Africa countries economic growth has become a significant area of study. The main focus of this paper is to investigate the impact, explore the possibilities and highlight the teething challenges that have masked the significant roles of agricultural sector in the transformation process of the Nigeria’s economy from transforming from a developing one to advanced nation. This paper span from the period 1970 to 2010 by using annual times series data. The Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimation method was adopted to examine the impact of agricultural sector in the economic growth of Nigeria. The variables employed include: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), output of agricultural sector, share of agriculture in the GDP, index of agricultural production, and ratio of agricultural output to GDP. The results of the analyses showed that the Nigeria agricultural sector contributes immensely to the economic growth of Nigeria but the over-dependence on the oil sector has over shadowed the potentials of the sector. In conclusion, some of the recommendations made in the study are that: the Nigerian agricultural policy needs to be evolved; there is need for national re-orientation towards agriculture or farming, the activities of agriculture financing, institutions in providing finance and credit for rural farmers, should be supplemented with the provision of road networks, rail system and warehouses, in order to further encourage farmers to increase their production etc. |
| Keywords: | Agriculture Sector, Economic growth, Gross Domestic Product, Nigeria |
| JEL: | O1 O10 O13 |
| Date: | 2025–08–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:93884 |
| By: | Enrico Nichelatti; Adnan Abdulaziz Shahir |
| Abstract: | Trade mis-invoicing represents a significant economic challenge in Ghana, with losses estimated at 3.03 per cent of gross domestic product in 2018. We examine the potential of a universal child benefit in Ghana through a counterfactual taxation of illicit financial flows. Using microsimulation, we model two budget-neutral designs: a flat per-child transfer and a quasi-universal schedule with higher amounts for larger households. Both options lower poverty and inequality, with stronger effects in rural areas and among larger households. |
| Keywords: | Illicit financial flows, Universal basic income, Microsimulation modelling, Poverty, Inequality |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-56 |
| By: | Yoseph Getachew; Richard Kima; Nyemwererai Matshaka |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a two-agent worker-capitalist heterogeneous household monetary Schumpeterian growth model to examine the effects of R&D and monetary policies on economic growth and inequality. The model is then calibrated to the South African economy, an upper-middle-income African country infamous for its consistently high level of inequality. A higher nominal interest rate reduces innovation and economic growth but help to mitigate inequality. However, the reduction in consumption inequality comes from a disproportionate decline in the capitalists' condition. |
| Keywords: | Economic growth, Inequality, Monetary policy, Research (Technological innovations) |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-55 |