Understanding the effect of oil wealth on democracy is important. National democratic institutions provide a check on governmental power and thereby limit the potential of public officials to amass personal wealth and to carry out unpopular policies. Democracy promotion has thus been at the top...

The book, a joint work of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the African Union (AU), presents a comprehensive analysis of the oil and gas resources in Africa. It uniquely highlights, through country examples, and with an African focus but a global perspective, the specific challenges and...

This paper provides econometric evidence linking African countries’ per capita total as well as government health expenditures and per capita income to two health outcomes: infant mortality and under-five mortality. This relationship is examined, using data from 47 African countries between...

In this paper, we investigated whether civil wars in Africa have economic andpolitical causes. The model is based on the Collier-Hoeffler “greed” and “grievance”theory in which rebels will conduct a civil war for “loot-seeking” and “justiceseeking”reasons. Using logit models the...

Using panel data of African countries from 1990 to 2002, this paper studies the relationship between government expenditure on education enrolments, with illustration from Nigeria and other SANE (South Africa, Algeria, Nigeria, and Egypt) countries at the primary and secondary school levels. The...

This paper investigates the impact of migrant remittances on income inequality in African countries, using a panel of five eight-year non-overlapping windows for the period 1960-2006. The results suggest that, first, international migrant remittances have a significant positive impact on income...

The central concern of this paper is to respond to the question: what determines FDI inflows to Africa? An understanding of such factors will assist African policymakers to formulate and execute policies for attracting FDI. Our estimation results from a panel of seven five-year non-overlapping...

This study empirically estimates the effect of Africa’s intra-regional trade on the burgeoning youth unemployment in the Continent. We investigate both the aggregate and gender-specific impacts. Our empirical estimates, using available cross-sectional time series data over the period, 1980 and...

This paper examines the effect of marital status and household size, among other correlates, on poverty in Nigeria, using the Harmonized Nigeria Living Standard Survey (HNLSS) data of 2009/2010. Our results show that monogamous marriage, divorce/separation and widowhood are negatively and...

Three countries in Southern Africa have the highest adult HIV prevalence in the world: Swaziland (25.9%), Botswana (24.8%), and Lesotho (23.6%). Fiscal policy is crucial for addressing this HIV/AIDS crisis. Utilizing a calibrated model, this paper investigates the impact of fiscal policy on...