The purpose of this study is to develop insight into the socio-economic determinants of African sports performance. Previous studies have argued that a country’s success in sports is directly related to the economic resources that are available for those sports. However, factors that are...

This paper constructs a Good Society Index for 45 African countries, termed the Good African Society Index (GASI). The GASI consists of nine main indexes: (i) economic sustainability, (ii) democracy and freedom, (iii) child well-being, (iv) environment and infrastructure, (v) safety and...

This paper analyses the modernisation hypothesis in the sub-Saharan African region. Using a sample of 48 countries from 1960 to 2010 and dynamic panel data analysis, we find a significant and negative relationship between income and democracy, an indication that the hypothesis may not hold in...

I use satellite imagery on night time lights to measure growth across states and local government areas in Nigeria since the return of democracy in 1999. I show that states in Southern Nigeria have grown faster on average than states in the North. I also evaluate the effects of violence on...

Rather than a rigid racial ideology, it is argued that South African apartheid was a pragmatic response of a white oligarchy to changing economic and political constraints. Consequently, the degree to which apartheid principles were applied and enforced by the South African state varied over...

The study investigates the criteria used by multinational companies to identify the locations of their African regional headquarters (RHQs) and the importance that multinational companies assign to the respective regional offices. We find that multinationals do assign value to their RHQs but are...

The Dutch disease argument suggests that in commodity exporting countries "overvaluation" of the currency due to increases in commodity prices harms manufacturing even though the economy as a whole benefits, led by the booming natural resources sector. The relationship between the real exchange...

The study investigates the main factors considered by South African telecommunications firms when making a decision to undertake Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This encompasses the reasons for investing, the methods of entry into the identified market and the...

In this paper we focus on the role of political and economic institutions in Mozambique’s development. We produce a set of institutional indicators for Mozambique for the period 1900 through to 2005. The first index tracks political freedoms and is unique in its duration and complexity....

Empirical explorations of the growth and productivity impacts of infrastructure have been characterized by ambiguous (countervailing signs) results with little robustness. A number of explanations of the contradictory findings have been proposed. These range from the crowd-out of private by...