External debt and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does governance matter?

This study empirically examined the impact of external debt on economic growth. Also, the interactions of governance, external debt and external debt volatility were further investigated with emphasize on the interective effect of governance as proxied by Kaufmann, D., (2007) quality governance measures such as; government effectiveness, political stability, voice and accountability, regulatory quality and corruption control on economic growth. The study utilized annual time series data, focusing on thirty selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 1997 to 2020. The Dynamic System Generalised Method of Moments estimation technique was adopted while controlling for conventional sources of economic growth. Empirical findings from the study reveal that external debt and external debt volatility have a negative and significant impact on economic growth in SSA. Furthermore, the interaction of governance indicators, external debt and its volatility, had a positive impact on economic growth in SSA. This study recommends that SSA government should endeavor to avoid excessive external debt to promote the regions' capacity to invest in her financial prospects, and to circumvent the danger of repayment of loans using her small income. The SSA governments should also improve the quality of governance by ensuring political stability, minimising corruption, implementing sound policies and regulations that can permit and promote economic growth through the development of the private sector. The governments must ensure that every borrowed debt is properly supervised and utilised for its purposes to spur economic growth. More so, the Guidotti-Greenspan rule of Reserve adequacy should be applied to keep excess borrowings in check.

Assessing the distributional effects of financial development on consumption-based carbon emissions in Sub-Saharan Africa: a quantile-based analysis.

This study assessed the role of financial development (FD) and its distributional effects in explaining consumption-based carbon (ConCO2) emissions, in a framework that also examined the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, in the context of 19 Sub-Saharan African countries. A composite index was used as measure of FD in a set of data spanning over the period 1995-2017, while controlling for population size (PS), energy intensity (EI) and natural resource rents (Nrr). Given that the variables deviate from expected normal distribution as adjudged by results of pre-estimation tests, the method of moments quantile regression (MM-QR) estimation technique was used to account for distributional effects of FD on ConCO2. Results of the fixed-effect regression based on Driscoll-Kray standard errors (FE-DK) which was validated by three other estimators (fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), canonical cointegration regression (CCR)) statistically provided support for FD, PS and EI as drivers of ConCO2. Distributional effects of this show that FD exerts significant positive effect on ConCO2 among countries in the higher quantiles, but insignificant positive effect among those at the lower quantiles. The model provided no support for the EKC hypothesis for SSA; policy implications of these results were presented.

What are the triggers of household decision-making on waste disposal choices? A gender differentiated analysis.

Across the African continent especially in Nigeria, solid waste disposal has created significant environmental and health issues. Studies on household decision-making on waste disposal choices are insignificant. This study uses the most recent 2018/2019 General Household Survey (GHS) - a national representative sample of 5000 households collected by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and World Bank - to offer greater insight on the socio-economic drivers of household's decision-making on the choice of alternative refuse disposal systems and how these choices vary across male-headed households (MHHs) and female-headed households (FHHs) in Nigeria. Adopting the Multinomial Logit and Exogenous Switching Treatment Effects Regression (ESTER) models, estimates show that education, family sizes, non-home ownerships, water availability, toilet locations, electricity connections within buildings, geopolitical zones, and urban areas are some determinants of household waste disposal choices which also varies by household types. However, quite a significant number of FHHs are observed to utilize informal refuse disposal systems than the MHHs representing a gender gap in the informal waste usage of 9%. In the counterfactual scenario FHHs average probability of adopting compound (informal) refuse disposal choices, would have increased by 4.2% (decreased by 5.4%) if they had the same socio-economic characteristics as MHHs. These results present some interesting factors related to the heterogeneity of alternative refuse disposal choices the heterogeneous effects of gender on such decisions. The study thus offers some policy inputs on how to ensure a clean and safe environment through proper disposal options.