Guest editorial

ABSTRACT

Corporate governance and sustainable development in Africa The African continent faces many challenges including extreme poverty, rampant corruption, human rights abuses, environmental degradation (due to extractive industry activities), extreme inequalities, HIV/AIDS, conflicts and weak rule of law. In the context of these many challenges, Africa is strongly featured in the UN 2030 Sustainable Development agenda as most vulnerable and deserving special attention (United Nations General Assembly, 2015). [...]SDGs are particularly relevant to Africa among other development countries. NEPAD in particular, an initiative by the African leadership, emphasises the importance of good governance for achieving sustainable development in Africa and sets out principles to strengthen, not only political governance, but also economic and corporate governance (Hope, 2005). [...]there has always been acceptance that effective firm-level corporate governance is paramount in supporting sustainable development in Africa on the continent (Hope, 2005). Most studies examining the impact of corporate governance in African firms' decision-making processes have focused on firm performance (Mangena et al., 2012;Darko et al., 2016;Assenga et al., 2018;Erena et al., 2022;Abang'a et al., 2022) and corporate reporting (Waweru et al., 2019;Chijoke-Mgbame et al., 2020). [...]our knowledge about whether and how corporate governance contributes to the SDGs or sustainable development principles in Africa remains very limited.