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The purpose of this paper is to examine the adoption of Islamic finance products (murabaha, musharakah, mudarabah, salam, ijara, istisna and Qard Hassan) by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Cameroon, a non-Islamic Sub-Saharan African country.

It used primary data collected from a cross-section of 1,358 SMEs in eight regions of Cameroon using self-administered structured questionnaires. To facilitate the analyses and interpretation, these products are grouped into four groups based on certain characteristics. A multivariate probit model is estimated to take into account the interaction between these different Islamic finance products.

This study revealed that the desire to comply with Sharia law, awareness, attitude and intention were critical determinants of the decision to adopt Islamic finance products by Cameroonian SMEs. The least influential factors were perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, enterprise characteristics (size, age and location) and socio-demographic characteristics of the entrepreneur (gender, age and marital status). The extension of the multivariate approach permitted us to compute for predicted probabilities which revealed that there exists a synergy effect between the different Islamic finance products. That is, Cameroonian SMEs combine different Islamic finance products at the same time based on their needs. This is especially the case between the partnership-based products (musharakah and mudarabah) and manufacture/rent products (istisna and ijara).

Policymakers are encouraged to develop stakeholder-oriented strategies to promote effective consumer education in Islamic finance products which will boost awareness. Also, Islamic finance institutions should endeavor to develop innovative financial products that are Sharia-compliant and economically beneficial to the individual and business needs of SMEs. Moreover, policymakers and management of Islamic finance institutions should ensure the putting in place of effective governance structures to guide Islamic finance operations. Finally, policymakers should endeavor to take into account the possible synergy between the different Islamic finance products in their quest to develop this activity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyses the adoption of different Islamic finance products while taking into account the possible synergy that exists between these products.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of Islamic finance on women empowerment in Africa between the periods of 1975 and 2021.

This paper uses secondary data for 27 African countries obtained from the World Development Indicators, World Population Review and the Varieties of Democracy databases. Four dimensions of women empowerment, namely, economic, social, political and household, are considered while Islamic finance is proxied by a binary variable with 1 and 0 representing the presence and the absence of Islamic finance, respectively. The two-staged least square estimation technique is used to control for the problem of endogeneity.

This study revealed that Islamic finance positively affects women empowerment in Africa. Specifically, Islamic finance has positive and significant effects on women political empowerment, women economic empowerment and women social empowerment in Africa but nonsignificant effect on home empowerment. These effects are more pronounced in middle-income than in low-income countries and in countries with higher penetration rate of Islamic finance.

Policymakers should put in place the necessary mechanisms for the promotion of Islamic finance such as the enacting of laws that ensures the creation of full-fledged Islamic banks, encouraging research in Islamic finance and Islamic economics. These policies should equally be backed by the creation of some accompanying measures such as the abolition of social norms that limit women’s ability to take part in decision-making.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study involving an Africa continent-wide analysis of the effects of Islamic finance on women empowerment.

This paper aims to ascertain whether halal certification mark, halal brand quality and halal awareness influence Nigerian consumers when making buying decisions.

The researchers reflect on the newly collected data to shed light on the above issues from the perspective of Nigerian consumers. To this end, a questionnaire was developed and used to collect data from 282 respondents. The data collected were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics.

This study found that halal certification mark and halal brand quality are the most influential factors that contributed to the consumers’ buying decisions in Nigeria.

Based on the findings of this study, the researchers have argued that more efforts are needed in the area of halal awareness in Nigeria. Similarly, the study argues that halal brand quality should always be held at the esteemed position. Based on the study’s findings, the authors have been able to fill the literature gap, particularly in the context of the Nigerian halal industry.

The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of credit constraints on agricultural labour productivity as well as the impact of credit constraints and agricultural labour productivity on rural households' consumption in Ghana.

This study uses the Ghana Living Standard Survey round six (GLSS 6) as the main source of data, which happens to be one of the most comprehensive household datasets in Ghana. Quantitative estimation techniques (namely: Endogenous Switching Regression and Two Stage Least Squares) are used to address possible endogeneity and selection into credit markets.

First, large households are prone to credit constraints while age (experience) and compliance with extension advice reduce credit constraints. Second, the determinants of agricultural labour productivity for both constrained and unconstrained households are age, sex, farm equipment, herbicide and farm size. Third, household size, education and livestock rearing influence agricultural labour productivity of constrained households. Fourth, credit constraints, irrespective of how they are measured, impede agricultural labour productivity while access to credit fosters labour productivity. Lastly, credit constraints robustly reduce consumption while agricultural labour productivity strongly enhances rural households' consumption.

The first contribution is that, unlike most previous studies, we do not focus on the widely used measure of productivity – output per unit land, but on agriculture labour productivity in particular. Secondly, unlike most previous studies which examine the effect of credit constraints either on productivity alone or consumption alone, our study examines the impact of credit constraints on both. Thirdly, unlike the existing literature which uses one or two measures of credit constraints, we use a wide range of measures of credit constraints – seven different measures of credit constraints. Lastly, our empirical strategy solves at least two critical econometric problems – sample selection bias and endogeneity.

The aim is to examine the long run and short run linear and non-linear impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows on poverty in Nigeria from 1980 to 2019.

The Augmented Dickey Fuller, Phillips Perron and Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin unit root tests and bounds test were used to tests the series stationarity and co-integration, respectively. Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) and non-linear and linear autoregressive Distributive Lag (NARDL) estimators are employed to examine the long run and short run impact of the coefficients of the variables and diagnostic check.

The study finds that the variables are integrated at a level I(0) and the first difference I(I) and co-integrated. The ARDL estimator indicates that FDI significantly reduces poverty in the long and short run. The findings under NARDL shows FDI positive shock and FDI negative shock reduces poverty substantially in the long-short run, respectively. The error correction term is negative and significant.

This study is limited to a single country (time series) and less informative compared with the panel data study with much informative and free from hetero-scedasticity. Future studies should consider panel data using a similar or dissimilar approach.

FDI inflows stimulate growth, thereby creating job openings, transfer of modern technology and reduce poverty and demonstrate that, if the finding integrated into policy actions, the government would attract FDI inflows for the real sector of the economy.

FDI inflows lead to environmental degradation if inferior technology is use in the host economy, especially the weak environmental regulations in Nigeria.

The authors find no study that applied both ARDL and NARDL estimator, selection of variables measurement and time frame for the study in the context of Nigeria.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2020-0530.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of Islamic banks’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) using data collected from stakeholders in Malaysia. While Islamic scholars have developed the Islamic CSR from the Qur’anic verses, the Sunnah of the Prophet (SAW) and from the western ideologies, the focus of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of the developed Islamic CSR practices.

Quantitative research design was adopted for this study. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and other analyses are performed on the data collected from 193 stakeholders in Malaysia.

Based on the data collected and analyzed, the results show that stakeholders view the Malaysian Islamic banks’ CSRs as effective.

This study investigates the effectiveness of Malaysian Islamic banks’ CSR based on the survey data collected. However, future studies could explore this in greater depth using mixed methods.

The research findings have great implications for researchers. Since this study is among the few research studies that investigate the effectiveness of Islamic CSR, the researchers have paved ways for further investigation in this area. In addition, the study encourages the Malaysian Islamic banks and other Islamic financial institutions to contribute more to the society.

The study examines the effectiveness of Islamic banks’ CSR and contributes to the growing discussions on the Islamic CSR. The study has opened up this area for further investigations by other researchers.

This study aims to identify the most significant barriers and the stationary barrier to modular construction (MC) implementation and promote MC widespread use. By doing so, the construction industry can leverage the benefits of MC, such as faster construction times, improved quality control, reduced waste and increased sustainability.

This study uses a Gini’s mean analysis approach to identify the stationary barriers hindering the MC adoption in residential projects. The research focuses on the Egyptian context and uses a questionnaire survey to gather data from professionals in the construction industry.

According to the survey findings, the top five significant MC barriers are inability to modify the design; contractors asking for high bidding prices (higher initial cost); scepticism, conservation and resistance of clients to innovation and change; transportation restrictions; and lack of a one-size-fits-all tool for the design. In addition, Gini’s mean of dispersion demonstrated that the stationary barrier that faces MC adoption is the apprehension that architectural creativity will suffer because of MC.

The identified obstacles could be useful for decision makers in countries that have not yet adopted MC and may aid in the planning process to manage the risks associated with MC projects. The paper stresses the significance of devising techniques to overcome these barriers and proposes several methods to tackle these challenges.

This study fills the knowledge gap by identifying the stationary barrier and emphasising the potential risks associated with MC barriers. Furthermore, it suggests several strategies for overcoming and reducing these barriers in developing countries residential projects.

This paper aims to analyse the implications of globalisation and the adoption of international standards (International Financial Reporting Standards [IFRS]) for accounting information quality.

This paper uses a sample of 329 banks across 29 countries leading up to and beyond the implementation of IFRS to test for related hypotheses.

First, banks’ financial statements are prepared on the basis of international standards as national economies are integrated when social norms are diffused. Building on these results, the second test suggests that the relatively high-quality earnings among banks in Africa during the period is attributable to the adoption of and interaction of IFRS with globalisation and the strategy of banks to diversify within and across interest and non-interest income.

The authors investigate how globalisation and the adoption of IFRS affect accounting information quality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of savings mobilization on access to credit among smallholder farmers’ in the Birim central municipality of Ghana.

A cross-sectional primary data set was used to estimate the factors influencing smallholder farmers’ access to credit and size of loan to be borrowed using the IV-Probit and IV-Tobit model.

The results of the study revealed that savings mobilization has a positive significant impact on access to credit and the total amount of credit one can borrow as well. Other control variables such as transaction cost and farm size depicted a negative significant impact on access to credit. Land ownership, member of an association, household size, years of farming experience and education also showed a positive significant impact on access to credit.

The paper only examined the savings effect on credit accessibility among smallholder farmers in one of the municipality’s in the Eastern region of Ghana. Future research should consider all or many municipality for an informed generalization of findings.

This paper provides evidence that smallholder farmers knowledge on the financial market is poor and it would require the policymakers or NGOs to organize financial management training programs so that the farmers high ignorance of the financial market will significantly reduce.

Although existing studies have examined smallholder farmers’ access to credit, the unique contribution of this paper is the analysis of the impact of saving mobilization on credit accessibility in Ghana, a major access to credit determinant in the financial market. In addition, those researchers who factored in savings as an access to credit determinant did not also consider the casual relationship between these two variables, thus, the present of endogeneity of which this paper does.

This study investigated the influence of institutional environment on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) accounting practices of banks in West Africa. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the size of an economy and the governance structure of a country is relevant for ESG accounting practice.

The study applied content analysis on 602 annual reports of 67 banks in 5 countries in West Africa. A generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation technique was used for the regression analysis.

The evidence showed that GDP has a positive and insignificant relationship with ESG reporting, suggesting that the size of an economy is not relevant for ESG accounting. The study further found that Corruption Perception Index has a positive and significant relationship with ESG accounting. This result implies that a country’s political environment is germane for ESG accounting. Firm-specific factors, such as firms’ size, value and age have positive and significant relationships with ESG accounting while net profit margin and leverage have negative relationships with ESG accounting. The study concludes that a country’s institutional environment influences the ESG accounting practices of its firms.

The governments of countries in West Africa must lay an enabling political and economic foundation to improve the accounting practices of firms, which is a critical factor for attracting investments.

The study contributes to the ESG accounting literature in developing countries which is found to be scarce.