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The recent economic performance of Sub Saharan Africa has been very disappointing. Its poverty has many dimensions and causes, both internal and external. This paper focuses on the role of institutions in promoting or hindering economic development in Africa and the implications for doing business on the continent. It questions our understanding of institutions and how they develop and warns against simplistic assumptions in this regard. The paper examines how it is that institutions come to affect economic growth and the characteristics of what makes for good institutions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the institutional environment on the performance of 291 microfinance institutions in 34 sub-Saharan Africa countries during the period 2006 to 2014, by analysing the unbalanced panel data using fixed effects and generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques. The panel regression results demonstrate strong evidence that a strong institutional environment has a positive effect on the performance of microfinance institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. More specifically, the findings reveal a positive and significant relationship between business freedom and microfinance performance in sub-Saharan Africa. These vital findings not only provide useful information to policy makers and key microfinance industry players, but also highlight the impact that institutional qualities have on microfinance performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that food security and human development are intricately linked, and that meaningful progress on the one cannot be sustained without concomitant progress on the other. The paper surveys recent research on various aspects of the linkages between food security and human development and highlights areas where further research would enrich our understanding of the complex interactions and synergies between the two. It concludes by calling for a more systematic investigation of the human development-food security nexus with a view to generating new and practical insights for improving food security and advancing human development in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Abstract: This paper studies the role played by the quality of property rights in the linkages of international capital flows into sub‐Saharan African (SSA) economies. Using panel data of 36 SSA countries over the period 1996–2015 and the ARDL procedure with the Pooled Mean Group regression method appropriate for non‐stationary panel data estimation, we account for the joint effects of property rights quality and openness to foreign capital flows on economic growth. We uncover the existence of a property rights quality threshold beyond which property rights either amplifies the spillovers effects or attenuates the negative effect of capital flows on economic growth. For instance, it takes a level of property rights of at least 60 to have a positive long‐term impact of capital flows on economic growth in natural resource‐poor African countries. The quality of property rights matters more to obtain spillover effects of capital flows on growth in natural resource‐poor countries than in their peer natural resource‐rich countries. Finally, with regard to the countries' income levels, capital flows have significant long‐term spillovers effects on economic growth in advanced African economies than in their low‐income peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To the extent that in utero and childhood malnutrition negatively affects later stage mental and physical health, it can possibly constrain later stage human capital acquisition, which is an important driver of economic growth. This paper considers the impact of famine on aggregate adolescent human capital formation in sub-Saharan Africa. We parameterize a joint adolescent human capital and food nutrition production function to estimate the effects of famine on years of primary school completed by individuals aged 15-19. Mixed fixed and random coefficient parameter estimates for 32 sub-Saharan African countries between 1980 and 2010 reveal that years of primary school completed by adolescents is proportional to the quantity of food and nutrition produced during childhood and in utero. This suggests that declines in food production and nutrition associated with famine in sub-Saharan Africa have large negative effects on the acquisition of human capital by adolescents and on long-run material living standards. Our findings show that there is yet another consequence to famine, a long-run reduction in adolescent human capital, and this should reinforce the case for strong food security programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article offers an overview on the economic condition in Africa as of September 16 to October 15, 2014. Noted is that the economic growth in the Sub-Saharan region has remained strong and had accelerated to 5.8% but is threatened by the consequence if the Ebola outbreak could spread in the western area. Described is that the economic atmosphere in South Africa had been lacklustre due to low business confidence, tight electrical supply and affected by protracted strikes.

There is a general belief that Sub-Saharan Africa has the poorest record of international remittances because, due to deficiencies in the region's financial systems, a greater proportion of remittances passes through informal channels. This article examines the interactive impact of financial development on remittances to the region. Using a panel data covering 32 countries in the region from 1995 to 2009, it finds evidence of weak financial infrastructure constraining the flow of remittances. It also shows that the higher the level of a country's infrastructural development, the greater the impact on remittances. The article establishes that the impact of financial development and institutional quality is greater in emerging markets than in developing economies, implying that improving the financial system and institutional structures in Africa should be at the centre of the current policy efforts to optimize the benefits of remittances. [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]