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This paper use both single period cross-section data as well as panel data for the period 1970 to 1990 (largely obtained from version 6.1 of the Penn World Tables) to identify the determinants of Africa's growth in per capita GDP, as well as to evaluate the empirical relevance of recent contributions that stresses the potential importance of geographical vs institutional factors in Africa's growth. The paper further contributes by making use of recent cross-country data on institutional quality and geographical characteristics of African countries. To address the danger of using an inappropriate estimation method, a number of estimation methods was used, namely OLS, LAD, GLS-random effects, fixed effects as well as a dynamic GMM-estimator. The results confirmed that the more efficient and dynamic GMM-estimator is superior and that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, dynamic effects and endogeneity of the regressors is important. It is concluded that there is conditional convergence in Africa, and that literacy, investment, FDI and urban agglomeration have a significant positive effect on GDP per capita growth in Africa. Growth is negatively affected by government expenditure, settler mortality, malaria, landlockedness and landarea. These results support Acemoglu et al.'s (2001) ‘reversal of fortune’ thesis, namely that settler mortality is inversely related to economic growth. It further suggests that it is not one of either institutions or geography that are more important than the other, but rather that geography may have an important impact on institutions. The robust finding that the incidence of malaria has a particularly large impact on economic growth in Africa supports this conclusion. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's relationship with Africa has grown exponentially over the last decade with US$95 billion in bilateral trade in 2008 and US$5.4 billion of Chinese investment in Africa for the same year. The growth of Sino-African relations also has an impact on the role of traditional development partners in Africa in particular in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which has already led some traditional development partners to reduce their aid budgets and subsequently their Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows to Africa. The objective of this paper is to analyse different development cooperation modalities in Africa of traditional development partners and China. This requires identifying trends in aid, debt relief, general budget support, trade, preferential trade access, and investment flows of both traditional development partners and China. The paper advocates that complementarities can be built between these development modalities on a national, regional and global level. This would enhance development effectiveness, increase efficiency and create win-win situations which would be beneficial to African countries, China and traditional development partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the weak form of market efficiency of five major stock markets; four African equity markets and one developed market. The weekly market index returns of the EGX 30, NSE 20, NSE All Share Index, FTSE-JSE All Share Index and the S&P 500 Index were analysed for the period 1998-2008. To determine if the stylized fact of stock returns in African markets violate the random walk hypothesis, numerous econometric and statistical techniques are employed. These methods include the autocorrelation test, the unit test, linear and non-linear models. The results indicate that the African markets do not behave in a manner consistent with the weak form of market efficiency. These results provide a contrast between the emerging African markets and the developed markets. It suggests that African emerging markets have higher average returns and volatility than developed markets. We argue that if the market could be made less volatile, it has the potential to attract more investment because of its attractive returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the possible effects of the US reform of the international settlement rate system on telecommunications investment in Africa. We estimate a telecommunications investment equation using a panel data of 51 African countries during the 1991–2003 period and find that settlement payments have significantly positive effects on telecommunications investment in African countries. A 10 percent increase in settlement payment, on average, increases the telecommunications investment expenditure to GDP ratio by 3.4 percent over a three-year period. Using previously calculated revenue loss from the US reform, our estimates suggest that African countries stand to lose between 4.4 to 11 percentage points of their telecommunications investment in the medium run and with it, possible decreases in income growth rate. However, we argue that African countries can counter the effects of this revenue loss by increasing the efficiency of telecommunications investment through appropriate market restructuring, including the promotion of competition and privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the trend, constraints, promotion, and prospects of investment – domestic investment, foreign direct investment, and private portfolio investment – in Africa. After identifying the importance of investment in Africa's economic development, it was shown that all forms of investment are low in Africa and hence inadequate for the attainment of the MDGs and poverty reduction in the continent. The constraining factors include: low resources mobilization; high degree of uncertainty; poor governance, corruption, and low human capital development; unfavorable regulatory environment and poor infrastructure, small individual country sizes; high dependence on primary commodities exports and increased competition; poor image abroad; shortage of foreign exchange and the burden of huge domestic and external debt; and undeveloped capital markets, their high volatility, and home bias by foreign investors. The paper recommends that successful promotion of both domestic, foreign direct and portfolio investment in Africa will require actions and measures at the national, regional, and international levels. It concludes that the prospects are bright. New and attractive investment opportunities are emerging in infrastructure, particularly as most African countries now encourage public/private partnerships for investments in this sector. In addition to privatization, renewed interest within Africa in undertaking regionally based projects and joint exploitation of natural resources is creating other investment opportunities. Apart from the fact that investment in Africa yields the highest returns, investment risk in the continent is declining. In addition, much progress has been made in recent years to improve the investment climate in Africa. All this is of course is not to deny that obstacles do remain hence economic reforms to enhance domestic investment would need to be complemented by measures to attract increased foreign capital. Critical in such endeavors must be efforts to improve governance in some countries as well as to eliminate socio-political violence in others and development of domestic capital markets, while government institutions must be modernized and upgraded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many African capital markets find the lack of an efficiently organized capital market a serious obstacle to the efficient use of their savings, and thus to their overall economic development. To improve the situation, this paper suggests the following policy recommendations: removal of impediments to capital market development, improvement of the financial system infrastructure for efficient trading activities, sound economic policies that stabilize the exchange rate and prices to help attract foreign investors, increased integration of the local capital market with the world capital markets, encouragement of family-owned firms to go public and, most importantly, liberalization of international capital flows. The study also proposes ‘privatization’ and ‘currency union’ as enhancers of capital mobilization for real sector investment in Africa. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1960s economic growth rates have been far lower in sub-Saharan Africa than in other developing regions. This poor performance has resulted primarily from endemic rent-seeking and the over-regulation of markets. To achieve high growth rates, African countries must improve the investment climate by reforming institutions, enhancing infrastructure and protecting property rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The MDGs are being misappropriated to gain support for a specific development strategy, agenda or argument, mostly being used as a call for more aid or as a Trojan horse for a particular policy framework. As relative benchmarks, they are extremely difficult to meet in countries with low human development. Their misinterpretation as one-size-fits-all targets is leading to excessive Afro-pessimism, begging the question whether Africa is missing the targets or whether the world is missing the point. The global MDG canon is dominated by a money-metric and donor-centric view of development, and is not ready to accept that growing disparities within countries are the main reason why the 2015 targets will be missed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within current poverty reduction programmes, focus on the social-welfare millennium development goals is widening to embrace a concern with infrastructural investment, particularly for remote areas. The previously popular assumption that rural disadvantage can be remedied by road-building is resurfacing. Using survey data from Ethiopia, Zambia and Vietnam, this article explores how effective such investment is in addressing mobility and social-service accessibility in rural areas. The findings indicate that, in extremely remote areas, road improvements may catalyse the expansion of social-service provision, as evidenced in Ethiopia. However, given the poor's relative lack of motor vehicles and ability to pay for public transport, they are, by no means, a sufficient condition for enhancing the mobility of the rural poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International institutions like the IMF and IBRD were created to oversee stability in international financial affairs, facilitate the expansion and balance of growth of international trade and reduce poverty in the poorest countries at risk of being left behind in economic development. The main aims of these two institutions were designed to avoid a repetition of the disastrous economic policies that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930's. In the mid 1980's, the Fund's lending operations increased dramatically. The exigency of the debt crisis caused the Fund to devise programs for adjustment over longer periods. These are known as extended arrangements and with other medium term programs, can be arranged through the Structural Adjustment Facility or the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility. Among steps required by the IMF and IBRD to improve the health of the economy and foreign direct investment climate are an improved trade environment, economic reforms, private-sector encouragement and a better regulatory framework. The full implementation of these policies initially proved costly for some African countries and hence resulted in either partial implementation or total abandonment of the reform program.