scholarly journals Impacts of Aid for Innovation on Economic Growth in the Sub-Saharan African Countries

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Beáta Udvari ◽  
Isaac Kwesi Ampah

Abstract For several years, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries continue to struggle with poverty, hunger, epidemics, access to proper sanitation and potable water etc. even though the continent is considered to be endowed with half of the world’s natural resources. Low value-added products continue to be the primary export of countries in the continent since it lacks the technical know-how to manage its resources for sustainable growth and development it envisages. This paper examines the effectiveness of aid for innovation in enhancing growth and innovative performance of SSA using the Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) and fixed effect models for the period 2002 to 2015. The empirical results revealed that growth and innovation in the continent could be improved significantly if aid is more advanced to innovation and research. Also, the paper noticed that aid for innovation have more impacts in countries with the lower level of innovation and technological advancement.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Obianuju Nnadozie ◽  
Isiaka Akande Raifu

Abstract This paper examines the nexus between infrastructure and manufacturing value added (MVA) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It employs panel data for 34 SSA countries spanning 2003 to 2018. The empirical results obtained from the static and dynamic panel estimation techniques applied suggest that infrastructure is essential for the improvement of manufacturing value added in SSA. Furthermore, our findings reveal that the infrastructure-MVA nexus varies by infrastructure types (electricity, transportation, information and communication technology (ICT) and water and sanitation) and across the different sub-regions that make up SSA. This study therefore posits that massive investment in infrastructure is a viable policy option for enhancing the growth and development of the manufacturing sector in SSA.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026666692110289
Author(s):  
Taiwo Akinlo

The study examined the relationship between information technology and insurance development in 40 sub-Saharan African countries during the period 2000-2017. The study employed System Generalised Method of Moment for the estimations. Life insurance premiums, non-life insurance premiums and total insurance premiums are used to measure life insurance, non-life insurance and total insurance, respectively. The information technology is measured by mobile phone, fixed telephone and Internet penetrations. The study found that the Internet promotes non-life insurance while its effect on life and total insurance is insignificant. The mobile phone produced a negative effect on life insurance, non-life insurance and total insurance. However, fixed telephone significantly contributed to life insurance, non-life insurance and total insurance. Based on these findings, there is a need for insurers to encourage their client to use information technology tools for insurance activities and also increase their interaction with their customers.


Author(s):  
Ladifatou GACHILI NDI GBAMBIE ◽  
Ousseni MONGBET

<p>Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries have benefited for more than fifty years from international aid in the form of loans and/or donations. Nevertheless, they seem not to benefit from these massive financial resources (ODA) they receive because their economic and social situation is not very good. This study aims to assess the impact of ODA on economic growth in SSA and to see if its effect on growth is conditioned by the quality of the economic policy. The estimates are conducted on a dynamic panel of twenty-three SSA countries running from 1985 to 2014. With macroeconomic data from the World Bank's CD-ROM (World Development Indicators, 2015), the Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) system from Blundel and Bond (1998) was used. The results show that the impact of ODA on growth is not significant. Subsequently, when squared aid (ODA2) is included in the estimate, ODA becomes significant, meaning that a substantial amount of assistance is required to be effective in raising the economic growth rate of the SSA countries. In addition, the effectiveness of ODA is conditioned by the quality of the economic policy. This seems to be bad in SSA, hence the negative impact of the aid on economic growth.</p>


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aziza Merzouki ◽  
Janne Estill ◽  
Erol Orel ◽  
Kali Tal ◽  
Olivia Keiser

AbstractIntroductionHIV incidence varies widely between sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. This variation coincides with a substantial sociobehavioural heterogeneity, which complicates the design of effective interventions. In this study, we investigated how sociobehavioural heterogeneity in sub-Saharan Africa could account for the variance of HIV incidence between countries.MethodsWe analysed aggregated data, at the national-level, from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys of 29 SSA countries [2010-2017], which included 594’644 persons (183’310 men and 411’334 women). We preselected 48 demographic, socio-economic, behavioural and HIV-related attributes to describe each country. We used Principal Component Analysis to visualize sociobehavioural similarity between countries, and to identify the variables that accounted for most sociobehavioural variance in SSA. We used hierarchical clustering to identify groups of countries with similar sociobehavioural profiles, and we compared the distribution of HIV incidence (estimates from UNAIDS) and sociobehavioural variables within each cluster.ResultsThe most important characteristics, which explained 69% of sociobehavioural variance across SSA among the variables we assessed were: religion; male circumcision; number of sexual partners; literacy; uptake of HIV testing; women’s empowerment; accepting attitude toward people living with HIV/AIDS; rurality; ART coverage; and, knowledge about AIDS. Our model revealed three groups of countries, each with characteristic sociobehavioural profiles. HIV incidence was mostly similar within each cluster and different between clusters (median(IQR); 0.5/1000(0.6/1000), 1.8/1000(1.3/1000) and 5.0/1000(4.2/1000)).


2015 ◽  
Vol 01 (04) ◽  
pp. 1550012
Author(s):  
Stefanos Xenarios ◽  
Heracles Polatidis ◽  
Matthew McCartney ◽  
Attila Nemes

The development of water storage schemes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is considered a major aid for those regions with unequal water distribution, limited accessibility and anticipated climate change impacts. Great attention is given by many SSA countries to set up different water storage schemes that may improve rural and urban development on a national level. The funding for the water storage schemes is often derived from foreign agencies which conduct feasibility studies for the financing of potential investments. Often however, the feasibility studies rely on a single monetary criterion which may not identify the most appropriate water storage in each case. In addition, limited data availability in many SSA countries increases the difficulty of identifying the most suitable storage option. This paper develops a multicriteria framework for the integrated evaluation of water storage strategies in Sub-Saharan African countries. A set of economic, agronomic and opinion-based criteria are assessed through the PROMETHEE II outranking approach. The introduction of crop modeling complements the limited field data available in agronomic criteria and enhances the scientific rigor of the method. Ethiopia is adopted as a representative case of SSA countries where a diverse set of water storage options is currently under construction, often financed by foreign agencies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Akhtaruzzaman ◽  
Shaohua Yang ◽  
Azizah Omar

Africa is no longer behind in the race of acquiring global share of foreign direct investment (FDI) compared to other developing regions. This study uses FDI dataset of 27 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and examines what drives the recent trend of higher FDI flows to Africa. A variety of empirical techniques (e.g. cross-section OLS, panel fixed effects and dynamic GMM) are employed for identifying main drivers of FDI in African countries. The finding of this research suggests that resource endowment is the main driver attracting FDI to SSA countries. More specifically, empirical estimates suggest that a one-standard deviation increase in resource endowment in the SSA countries is associated with an increase in FDI ranging from 34% to 83%. Empirical result also suggests that between institutions and resource endowment, resource endowment is the most robust determinant of FDI in SSA countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sakiru Oladele Akinbode ◽  
Adewale Oladapo Dipeolu ◽  
Tobi Michael Bolarinwa ◽  
Oladayo Babaseun Olukowi

PurposeSome progress have been made over time in improving health conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). There are, however, contradicting reports on the relationship between health outcomes and economic growth in the region. The paper aimed at assessing the effect of health outcome on economic growth in SSA.Design/methodology/approachData for 41 countries from 2000 to 2018 were obtained from WDI and WGI and analyzed using system generalized method of moment (sGMM) which is appropriate for the present scenario. AR(1) and AR(2) tests were used to assess the validity of the model while Sargan and Hansen tests were adopted to examine the validity of the instrumental variables. The robustness of the estimation was confirmed using the pooled OLS and fixed effect regression.FindingsHealth outcome (proxied by life expectancy), lagged GDP per capita, capital formation, labor force (LF), health expenditure (HE), foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade openness (TOP) significantly affected economic growth emphasizing the importance of health in the process of economic growth in the region. AR(1) and AR(2) tests for serial correlation and Sargan/Hansen tests confirmed the validity of the estimated model and the instrumental variables respectively. Robustness of the GMM results was established from the pooled OLS and the fixed effect model results.Social implicationsImprovement in the national health system possibly through the widespread adoption of National Health Insurance, increase government spending on healthcare alongside increased beneficial trade and ease of doing business to facilitate investment were recommended to enhance.Originality/valueThe study used up-to-date data with appropriate methodology.


Equilibrium ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Świerczyńska

Research background: Economic development in sub-Saharan Africa is of paramount importance, yet it escapes most of the attempts to understand it better in the economic dis-course, and it remains a sensitive issue in politics, contradicting stakeholders at national and international levels. The region still lags behind others in terms of technological advancement and economic development. It has grown  significantly in the precedent decade, but the extent of growth has not sufficiently translated to its development. Determining strategies for sub-Saharan Africa is a scientific challenge, which requires more attention. In the globalized, interconnected reality, solving problems of the South is in the best interest of the North. Purpose of the article: The aim of this research is to analyze structural changes as factors of economic development in the best performing sub-Saharan African countries on the grounds of new structural economics in order to provide policy implications.   Methods: Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Gabon were selected as best performing economies in the region. Based on the literature review and the analysis of descriptive statis-tics, profiles of sample countries were set. This in turn allowed to determine the potential explanatory variables for OLS model of economic development. In the model, factors relating to labour productivity, technology and structural change were included. The data was sourced from WDI (World Development Indicators) database, Gretl software was used for computations. Findings & Value added: This paper contributes to the literature by attempting to explain structural changes in the process of economic development in the sub-Saharan region on the sample of best performing states. The paradigm of new structural economics provided theo-retical grounds for empirical analysis. Based on the results, policy implications were proposed with respect to technology promotion, natural resources management, and quality of institutions. The research was limited by data availability and reliability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (229) ◽  
pp. 119-144
Author(s):  
Uweis Bare ◽  
Yasmin Bani ◽  
Normaz Ismail ◽  
Anitha Rosland

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is one of the highest recipients of remittances; however, this is inconsistent with the region?s growth and the state of its weak healthcare systems. This paper therefore analyses the effect of remittances on health outcomes for 39 selected SSA countries over the period 1996 to 2016. It considers the channels through which remittances affect health outcomes, including financial development and institutional quality. Using dynamic panel estimation, we find that remittances sustain health outcomes, while both financial development and institutional quality complement remittances in this respect. SSA countries should therefore continue to improve their financial sectors and develop the quality of institutions to an adequate level. Achieving sound financial systems and institutions would both allow and attract a substantial amount of remittances, benefitting human capital and health outcomes and alleviating poverty.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pam Zahonogo

The paper investigates how financial development affects poverty indicators in developing countries. We implement this analysis with a poverty model using data from 42 Sub-Saharan African countries and covering the period 1980-2012. We employ the System Generalized Method-of-Moment (GMM) that is appropriate to control country specific effects and the possible endogeneity. The empirical evidence shows that there indeed exists a financial development threshold below which financial development has detrimental effects on poor and above which financial development could be associated with less poverty. The evidence then points an inverted U curve type response and the findings are robust to changes in poverty measures and to alternative model specifications, suggesting thus the non-fragility of the linkage between financial development and poverty for sub-Saharan African countries. Our findings are then promising and support the view that the relation between financial development and poverty reduction is not linear for sub-Saharan African countries.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document