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This study aims to examine the nature of business‐to‐business marketing practices in two West African nations, Ghana and Ivory Coast, and compare them with marketing practices in another emerging market economy (Argentina) and a developed economy (the USA).

Survey data were collected in both West African nations, Argentina and the USA, using a standard survey instrument used in previous contemporary marketing practice (CMP) studies. Descriptive statistics were used to determine cross‐national differences in intensity of use of various CMP activities in Ghana and the Ivory Coast in comparison with Argentina and the USA. Then, cross‐national differences in various combinations of marketing practices were identified using cluster analysis.

Business‐to‐business marketing practices in West African nations conform with the CMP framework in that firms practise both transactional marketing and relationship marketing simultaneously. However, there are differences in the intensity and scope of business‐to‐business marketing practices in Ghana and the Ivory Coast in comparison with Argentina and the USA. While West African business‐to‐business firms emphasize traditional transactional marketing with some network marketing components, Argentine firms have a greater emphasis on pluralistic marketing and interaction marketing. By contrast, US firms practise pluralistic marketing (transactional, database, interaction, and networking) with some transactional marketing activities. In addition, West African business‐to‐business firms are similar to Argentine firms in that a proportion of firms practise marketing at a low level of intensity and rarely use database marketing. These differences are attributable to the nature of market conditions in West Africa.

The CMP results generalize to West African nations. However, a direct correspondence is unlikely because of the dominance of transactional marketing practice among West African firms. Further research needs to investigate a broader set of institutional environments in order to provide a clear link between CMP and environmental conditions in emerging African markets.

Managers can determine the appropriateness of international benchmarks for West African market conditions.

Linking CMP to market conditions in the paper provides an extension to the validity of the CMP framework.

Despite being a viable source of funds, African sovereign bond markets are relatively underexplored. The empirical literature fails to consider the impact of exclusively macroeconomic factors and the volatile contexts in which African markets operate. The purpose of this paper is to fill the vacuum by proposing a context-sensitive theoretical framework. The study targets, specifically, macroeconomic factors and assesses the extent to which they affect bond market development.

Using panel data on sovereign bond markets from 26 African economies, the study extends previous methodologies used in similar studies by accounting for downside risk in a generalized method of moments (GMM) framework and employing tighter robustness measures.

This study finds that inflation, domestic debt, external debt, GDP at PPP, fiscal balance and exports are important macroeconomic drivers of sovereign bond market development in African emerging economies.

While GMM estimation is beneficial in the presence of endogeneity between the dependent variables that are instrumented with lagged independent variables, it guarantees consistency but, not unbiased estimations.

Market-oriented government funding with well-defined debt management strategies must be implemented to support the development of sovereign bond markets. External debt must be set at a sustainable level, and government should be dedicated to the confirmation of this. Furthermore, inflation rates must be kept low and stable.

If policymakers are to take this study seriously, bond markets may begin to be viable sources of funds for African emerging economies.

This study introduces a methodology for measuring bond market development that considers the systemic volatility in emerging markets and proposes a theoretical framework for African emerging economies. In addition, the authors identify a new macroeconomic determinant of bond market development in the region.

The purpose of this study is to identify and review strategic government policies on agricultural financing in Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa. Four factors dictated the choice of these countries. In the first place, the study is set in African emerging markets – and the four countries are the widely acknowledged emerging markets in Africa (Onyiriuba, 2015). Secondly, the spread of the countries, to a large extent, mirrors Africa in general – Egypt and Morocco are in North Africa; Nigeria is a West African country; and, of course, South Africa. Thirdly, other countries in Africa tend to look up to the four countries, apparently as the largest economies in their respective regions. Needless to say, Nigeria alternates with South Africa as the largest economy in Africa. In this capacity, the two countries influence – indeed, mirror – continental Africa's emerging economic progress. Fourthly, lessons from agricultural policy and financing experiences of the four countries will certainly be useful to the other African countries. The specific objective of this paper is to determine how the government seeks to address the financing issues attendant on the risk-laden nature of agriculture through policy interventions. With this end in view, the paper analyses the strategic goals, objectives and beneficiaries of the agriculture financing policies of the government, as well as the constraints on access to finance by the farmers and the policy response.

The study involves a review of empirical literature and government policies on agricultural financing in Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa. The high risks in agriculture (Onyiriuba, 2015; Mordi, 1988), risk aversion behaviour of banks towards agricultural financing (Onyiriuba, 2015, 1990), and the reluctance of insurers to take on agricultural risks (World Bank, 2018; Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2016; Onyiriuba, 1990; Mordi, 1988) underpin this methodology. There are two other considerations: the needs to find out how government seeks to address the financing issues in agriculture through policy intervention, and to avoid unwieldy research, one that combines government and institutional policy perspectives on agriculture financing. Thus the study is not approached from the perspective of banks and other lending institutions; neither does it combine government and institutional policy perspectives. It rather focuses on government policy in order to properly situate implications of the findings.

The authorities seek to get rid of bottlenecks, ease participation and redress constraints on access to finance in agriculture through policy interventions as a means of sustainable economic growth. The findings are characteristic of emerging markets, rooted in the transitional challenge of opening economies, economic reforms and the March of progress. However, with agriculture and natural resources – rather than industrialisation – as the main stay of their economies, the African emerging markets face an uphill task in their development efforts. This is evident in the divergent and gloomy pictures in which the literature paints their agricultural economies.

Government should gear financing policies to boost output as a means of ensuring food security. It should address risk aversion tendencies among the lenders and feeble credit guarantee, subsidies and budgetary allocations to agriculture. This will ensure effective commitment of the lenders to agriculture and underpin agricultural insurance. However, it demands strengthening links in the chain of access to, and monitoring of, credit for agricultural production. A realistic policy response should target the rural economy – with youth, women and smallholder farmers as ultimate beneficiaries. These actions should be intensified as measures to boost farming and the rural economy.

Current literature fails to situate the empirical findings in emerging markets context, reflecting economies in transition. Besides, in its current state, the literature does not explicitly clarify that agriculture, like most other sectors in such economies, is bound to experience the observed financing constraints. Neither does it clearly reflect how and why the findings should be seen as fleeting realities of the March of progress in transitional economies. This study will help to fill the gap.

The aim of the research is to examine in depth the relationship between financial support, entrepreneurship and economic growth in emerging African economies.

The study adopts the system-generalized methods of moments (sys-GMM) technique for data analysis and hypothesis testing on a sample of 34 African emerging economies (340 observations) from 2010 to 2019.

The results show that there is significant positive correlation between financial support, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Moreover, entrepreneurship served as a partial mediator between financial support and economic growth in African emerging economies.

This research suggests that African governments should focus on entrepreneurial systems, which are essentially networks driven by the pursuit of individual opportunities and the promotion of new business creation; and introduce other forms of financial assistance, such as loans, loan guarantees, interest subsidies, technical assistance, insurance, etc.

The main novelty of the paper is that the authors empirically investigate the mediating role of entrepreneurship in the association between financial support and economic growth in 34 African emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the board structure and process disclosure (henceforth BSPD) level on corporate performance, depending on the Anglophone vs Francophone business culture prevailing in African emerging markets.

The BSPD score is measured by searching 220 annual reports (year ended 2006) for information of 35 items provided by S&P's template in 11 emerging markets in Africa. The empirical model builds on multiple regressions and assumes interaction between the Anglophone/Francophone business culture and BSPD level to affect corporate performance.

African companies from countries having historical links with Great Britain exhibit substantially higher BSPD scores than those from countries having historical links with France. The influence of BSPD level on corporate performance is more pronounced for financial Anglophone African companies than non‐financial Anglophone African companies.

Providing BSPD levels for African emerging markets helps to a better understanding of the board of directors' activity and characteristics that prevail in both Anglophone and Francophone African companies. The implications are potentially useful for regulators, market authorities and standard setters in order to provide new requirements on corporate governance narrative reporting in African emerging markets. BSPD scores obtained for African emerging markets can also serve for comparison with other emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

This paper is one of the first to examine the effect of BSPD level on corporate performance in African emerging markers. This study contributes to asserting the role of Anglophone vs Francophone business culture in shaping the level of disclosure on board structure and activity and its influence on corporate performance in Africa.

This study is aimed at testing the validity of the BARS theory and determining the threshold level at which excessive government expenditure hampers growth. The data from 10 African emerging economies from 1988 to 2019 were used.

The methodology comprises several different stages. In the first stage, an Lagrange Multiplier (LM) type test was employed to find the appropriate transition variable among all the candidate variables to assess the linearity between government expenditure and economic growth and to find the sequence for selecting the order m of the transition function. The linearity test helped to identify the nature of the relationships between government expenditure and economic growth. In the second stage, the model evaluation was tested using the wild cluster bootstrap-Lagrange Multiplier (WCL-LM) test to assess appropriateness of the model. Thirdly, the Panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model with one regime was estimated to test the validity of the BARS curve.

The results revealed evidence of nonlinear effects between government expenditure and economic growth, where the size of the government spending was found to be a 27.84% share of GDP, above which government expenditure caused growth to decline in African emerging economies. The findings combined into an inverted U-shape relationship, in line with the BARS theory.

This study proposes that policy-makers ought to formulate prudent fiscal policies that encourage expenditure, which would improve growth for selected countries as their current level of spending is below the threshold. This might be done through: (1) a suitable investment portfolio and (2) spending more on infrastructure.

The development of banking in Africa followed the demand of exchange networks from traditional indigenous economies to colonial exchange with the European world. The establishment of European banking institutions reflected the needs of the capitalist economy introduced by colonialism. The banking management of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century European banks adhered to the interests of shareholders. This chapter shows the emergence of well-managed banks in Africa, but after decolonization the political economy of African independence resulted in state capturing of financial institutions in most African countries. The South African banking system developed in close adherence to the British model. State-owned post-independence banks in Africa failed to deliver the development envisaged. The chapter shows the adverse impact of global economic developments on Africa, resulting in high debt levels. Structural adjustment of African economies and new market-oriented policies allowed the development of locally owned private banking institutions. The high-cost structure of the formal banking system from the dominant South African banks incentivised the mobile money innovation, an arena where African entrepreneurs lead global markets. Financial inclusion remains low in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) content in the context of four differing national institutional arrangements for welfare. An analysis is presented on how self-reported CSR differs in content across two western welfare states (the UK and Sweden) and two emerging economies in southern Africa (South Africa and Mauritius).

This paper is based on a qualitative content analysis of the CSR self-reporting of 40 companies. This involved 10 of the largest companies incorporated in four countries, namely, Sweden, the UK, South Africa and Mauritius. The content is categorised into community involvement, socially responsible production and socially responsible employee relations. For each category, an analysis is provided of the reported issues (the question of what), the geographic focus of reported issues (the question of where) and ways of working with these issues (the question of how), as well as the extent of reporting and level of reporting (the question of how much).

The study shows that companies place focus on aspects, issues and localities in ways that differ between countries and can be understood in relation to current institutional arrangements for welfare. The content of self-reported CSR can be both complementing and mirroring the welfare arrangements. Differences in self-reported CSR agendas are particularly evident between the two western welfare states on the one hand and the two emerging economies on the other, as these represent two distinct contexts in terms of welfare arrangements.

This paper contributes to research on the institutional embeddedness of CSR in three ways: first, by going beyond measures of country differences in terms of extent of CSR to consider differences in CSR content; second, by focusing on the social aspects of CSR and placing these differences in relation to welfare configurations; and third, by contributing with empirical findings on how CSR content differs across national settings and across the established/emerging economy divide.

Recognising the rapid institutional changes multinational corporations (MNCs) face in emerging markets, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of various institutional factors on their triple bottom-line (TBL) reporting. The study builds on existing research where it has been noted that international business theory needs to adapt to the changes in the global economy, particularly the need to recognise the influence of several contingent variables in African emerging markets (AEMs).

The study design was cross-sectional where a survey was administered to MNCs operating in four leading countries situated in key economic regions in Africa. Following validity and reliability testing, hypotheses were tested using regression analysis.

Findings show that an independent judiciary system and an adequate national security system were found to have a positive and significant influence on the MNC’s TBL reporting. These institutional factors highlight the perceived importance of “law and order” for MNCs in AEMs.

Policy implications relate to the need for specific and targeted interventions aimed at improving institutional factors in AEMs.

Instead of focusing on the internationalisation of AEM firms, the study took a different approach by focusing instead on countries previously under researched and how MNCs are affected by the institutional regimes in these AEMs.