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Exercising fiscal prudence in periods of deteriorating fiscal balance requires sound policies which promote debt sustainability. This paper estimates a dynamic cross-country model and investigates the impact of domestic debt on economic growth and private sector credit in a panel of 21 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1985 to 2010. System-GMM results reveal a non-linear relationship between domestic debt and economic growth, characterized by a maximum turning point of 11.4 per cent of GDP. In addition, domestic debt is found to crowd out private sector credit by an elasticity of negative 0.3 per cent of GDP, deterring capital accumulation and private sector growth. These findings underscore the need for effective debt management strategies which incorporate debt ceiling to limit domestic indebtedness, as well as the design of financial policies which enhance credit availability, promote fiscal discipline and deepen domestic debt markets on the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses an instrumental variables approach to estimate the relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. Instrumental variables estimates show that economic growth has a significant negative contemporaneous effect on trade openness, while trade openness has a significant positive effect on economic growth. A 1 percentage point increase in the ratio of trade over GDP is associated with a short-run increase in growth of approximately 0.5% in a given year; the cumulative long-run effect on the level of GDP per capita is larger, reaching about 2%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the long-run finance-growth nexus in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using data from 17 countries over the period 1975-2005. We apply error correction-based panel cointegration tests that take into account cross-sectional dependence among countries. Our results - unlike a previous study using the same data - indicate the existence of a long-run relationship between financial and economic development in SSA countries. Moreover, our results clearly show that the long-run causality runs from financial to economic development, although a muted support for the reverse causal impact is observed when financial development is measured by the percentage of liquid liabilities in GDP. The estimated long-run parameters measuring the finance-growth link are positive and statistically significant. Therefore, our results strongly support policies aimed at developing the financial sector in SSA in order to promote long-run economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sub-Saharan Africa will be undergoing substantial demographic changes over the next 15 years with the rising working-age share of its population. The opportunity of African countries to convert these changes into demographic dividends for growth and poverty reduction will depend on several factors. The outlook will likely be good if African countries can continue the gains already made under better institutions and policies, particularly those affecting the productivity of labor, such as educational outcomes. If African countries can continue to build on the hard-won development gains, the demographic dividend could account for 11-15% of gross domestic product ( GDP) volume growth by 2030, while accounting for 40-60 million fewer poor in 2030. The gains can become more substantial with better educational outcomes that allow African countries to catch up to other developing countries. If the skill share of Africa's labor supply doubles because of improvements in educational attainment, from 25 to about 50% between 2011 and 2030, then the demographic dividends can expand the regional economy additionally by 22% by 2030 relative to the base case and reduce poverty by an additional 51 million people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the challenges posed by the demographic change in sub-Saharan Africa. It talks about the economic growth and the trending annual real gross domestic product (GDP). Topics include falling fertility, declining dependency ratios, and population pressure on human capital formation.

We analyse the relationship between public debt, economic growth and inflation in a group of 52 African economies between 1950 and 2012. The results indicate that the limits of public debt are negatively related to economic growth and exhibit, from a given level of debt, an inverted U behaviour regarding the relationship between economic growth and public debt. Briefly, the high levels of public debt are coincident with reduced rates of economic growth and rising levels of inflation. Our results for three specific geographical areas resemble those of the overall analysis, despite some differences. In North African countries, the growth rates of the gross domestic product ( GDP) and inflation also show an inverted U behaviour as the ratio of public debt/ GDP increases. The highest rate of economic growth is recorded when the ratio of public debt/ GDP is below 30% of GDP and corresponds to an average inflation rate of 5.33%. An identical behaviour of the GDP growth rates and inflation also appears in Sub-Saharan countries until the third interval (60-90%). However, the highest growth rate of the GDP and GDP per capita is registered when the public debt/ GDP ratio is in the second interval (30-60%). For the countries of the Southern Africa Development Community, the highest average rate of economic growth (6.8%) is similar to North African countries, when the ratio public debt/ GDP is below 30% of GDP, with an average inflation rate of 11%. A number of robustness analyses were performed and the great majority of them confirm the general analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity consumption in Sub- Saharan Africa has surged over the past two decades, whereas economic fundamentals like growth in gross domestic product ( GDP) might have contributed to this trend, the impact of changing climatic conditions cannot be underestimated. This study therefore investigates the dynamics among electricity consumption, temperature variability (a proxy for climate change) and economic growth, while controlling for urbanization within a structural vector error correction model for 11 countries in Sub- Saharan Africa. Findings from the study indicate that a positive shock in temperature variability has a positive permanent effect on electricity consumption for all the countries except Togo, South Africa and Zimbabwe. In the case of Togo we find only transitory effects of positive shocks in temperature variability on electricity consumption. However, these effects are minimal, given the low penetration rate for air conditioners and heating devices in these countries. Moreover the findings further indicate that the effects of a positive shock in temperature variability on real GDP is consistent in terms of the direction of the effects, which is negative, but only vary across the sampled countries in relation to the period(s) the effects of the shocks completely diminished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a recent surge in research on long-term African development. For this research agenda to be fruitful and its theories tested, it is crucial to have consistent estimates of economic change. However, there is a lack of reliable time series data for the colonial period in Sub-Saharan Africa. This article contributes new time series data for the Gold Coast and Ghana between 1890 and 2010 and in particular a new GDP time series for Ghana for the years 1891–1957. The series implies a sustained period of economic expansion from the late nineteenth century. This suggests a revision of some prevalent truths about the history of economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, and points the way forward for expanding the database to cover the colonial period for other African economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent improvements in economic performance, undernutrition rates in sub-Saharan Africa appear to have improved much less and rather inconsistently across the continent. We examine to what extent there is an empirical linkage between income growth and reductions of child undernutrition in Africa. We pool all DHS surveys for African countries, control for other correlates of undernutrition, and add country-level GDP per capita. We find that a 10 percent increase in GDP per capita is associated with 1.5 to 1.7 percent lower odds of being stunted, 2.8 to 3.0 percent lower odds of being underweight, and 3.5 to 4.0 percent lower odds of being wasted. Other drivers of undernutrition, including relative socioeconomic status and mother's education and her nutritional status, are quantitatively more important. This suggests that further increases in GDP will have only a modest impact on undernutrition and broader interventions are required to accelerate progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization has traditionally been understood as a byproduct of economic development, but this explanatory framework fails to account for the phenomenon of 'urbanization without growth' observed in sub-Saharan Africa throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In light of this apparent anomaly, I argue that urbanization is better understood as a global historical process driven by population dynamics associated with technological and institutional innovations that have substantially improved disease control and food security in urban settlements across the globe. These innovations first emerged in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were subsequently diffused through colonialism, trade, and international development assistance. A range of qualitative and quantitative evidence is presented to demonstrate that this historically grounded theory of urbanization offers a more convincing explanation for the stylized facts of Africa's urban transition-and hence the process of world urbanization more broadly-than the traditional economic account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates empirically the direction of causality between financial development and economic growth in three sub-Saharan African countries — Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. The study seeks to answer one critical question: Does financial development in sub-Saharan African countries exhibit a supply-leading or demand- following response? Using three proxies of financial development against real GDP per capita (a proxy for economic growth), the study finds that the direction of causality between financial development and economic growth is sensitive to the choice of measurement for financial development. In addition, the strength and clarity of the causality evidence is found to vary from country to country and over time. On balance, a demand-following response is found to be stronger in Kenya and South Africa, whilst in Tanzania a supply-leading response is found to be dominant. The study therefore recommends that for Kenya and South Africa the real sector of the economy should be developed further in order to sustain the development of the financial sector. However, for Tanzania, there is need for further development of the financial sector in order to make the economy more monetized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]