This paper ties together the macroeconomic and microeconomic evidence on the competitiveness of African manufacturing sectors. The conceptual framework is based on the newer theories that see the evolution of comparative advantage as influenced by the business climate -- a key public good -- and...

As at today, it is an indisputable fact that the climate is changing and there is a scientific consensus that the world is becoming a warmer place principally attributable to human activities. Regrettably, the physical impacts of future climate change on humans and the environment will include...

The global food price crisis of 2007/08 raised fears about the impacts of higher and more volatile food prices for the poor in Zambia. Like in the past, the implementation of the strategies to deal with the rising food prices, especially for the staple crop maize were delayed due to ineffective...

Examination in both theoretical and empirical prospective of the Capital market, deduce that the major indicators of modern economic growth, depends on the extent of economic financialization, commonly defined as capital stock, industrialization and Technological Advancement. The focus of this...

This study examines the effect of regulatory independence of the central bank in shaping the impact of electoral cycles on bank lending behaviour in Africa. It employs the dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) Two-Step estimator for a panel dataset of 54 African countries over the...

Expansion in mobile phone coverage has improved access to information throughout the developing world, particularly within sub-Saharan Africa.  The existing evidence suggests that information technology has improved market efficiency and reduced consumer prices for certain commodities.  There...

This paper investigates the effects of religion on a broad set of development outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. We regroup these outcomes into three broad categories, namely, development process outcomes (growth, investment, conflict, and government quality), institutional outcomes (property...

The issue of foreign aid dependency in African countries remains controversial among policy makers. So far, there is no consensus on aid effectiveness and the resulting policy prescriptions have been conflicting. The Euro zone which provides the bulk of foreign aid to developing countries, is...

This paper assesses improved maize adoption in Malawi and examines the link between adoption and household welfare using a three-year household panel data. The distributional effect of maize technology adoption is also investigated by looking at impacts across wealth and gender groups. We...

This paper critically reviews the impact of globalization on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since the early 1980s. The large gains expected from opening up to international economic forces have, to date, been limited, and there have been significant adverse consequences. Foreign direct investment in...