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Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is regarded as a region with one of the worst cases of armed conflict and climate risk. This paper examines the interactive effect of armed conflict and climate risk on gender vulnerability in SSA.

The difference and system generalised method of movement (GMM) were used to examine the relationship between the variables using annualised data of 35 SSA countries from 1998 to 2019.

The paper found strong evidence that armed conflict and climate change are positive predictors of gender vulnerability. The impact of climate change on gender vulnerability is found to be more direct than indirect.

The direct and indirect positive effect of armed conflict and climate change on gender vulnerability implies that climate change drives gender vulnerability through multiple channels. This underscores the need for a multi-disciplinary policy approach to addressing gender vulnerability problem in SSA.

The study contributes to the climate action debate by highlighting the need for climate action to incorporate gender inclusive policies such as massive investment in infrastructure and safety nets that offer protection to the most vulnerable girls and women affected by armed conflict and climate change. Societies should as a matter of urgency strive to structural barriers that predispose girls and women to biodiversity loss.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0595

This study aims to examine the effects of board independence and gender diversity on bank performance in Nigeria.

The two-step system-generalized method moment was used to estimate the effect of board independence and gender diversity on bank performance in Nigeria using annual data of 15 deposit money banks from 2006 to 2018.

The results revealed that gender diversity is a significant positive predictor of bank performance, whereas board independence is a negative predictor of bank performance in Nigeria.

Despite the significant positive relationship between gender diversity and bank performance, this paper does not recommend mandatory quota-based initiates of female representation on corporate boards because of the increasing number of female representations on corporate boards of banks in Nigeria.

The study contributes to corporate governance literature from developing country perspective and policy, particularly, on the relevance or otherwise of market-based measures in assessing bank performance in developing counties. This paper finds that market-based variables are not good measures of firm performance in economies with underdeveloped markets.

This paper aims to examine the effect of financial technology on cash holding in Nigeria.

The authors use Pesaran et al.’s (2001) autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test approach to cointegration to estimate the long-run relationship between four direct measures of financial technology (automated teller machine [ATM], Internet banking [IB], point of sale [POS] and mobile banking [MB]) and cash holding.

The authors find the presence of long-run negative relationship between cash holding and the four direct measures of financial technology.

Despite the negative effect of financial technology on cash holding, the descriptive results highlight increasing trajectory in cash holding. This suggests that structural factors such as ethical climate, literacy level, household characteristics, currency denomination structures, economic uncertainty and infrastructure deficit may account for the pervasive cash transactions in Nigeria and not necessarily the unwillingness of economic agents to use digital platform for financial transactions.

This study contributes to existing literature by augmenting the money demand function to accommodate direct measures of financial technology in examining the effectiveness of the policy on cash holding in Nigeria.

This paper examines the impact of regional and non-regional trade on economic growth using annual data from Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member countries for the period 2007 to 2017.

Trade data were decomposed into regional (trade among ECOWAS Member States) and non-regional (trade between ECOWAS Member States and the rest of the world). We used the dynamic system GMM to estimate the models and introduced exchange rate, unemployment rate, population growth and gross capital formation as controlled variables.

The results revealed that the estimated coefficient of ECOWAS regional trade is statistically significant and positive in predicting growth, while the non-regional trade coefficient is negative and not statistically significant in predicting growth. Other predictors of growth introduced into the model as controlled variables, such as exchange rate, unemployment rate, population growth and gross capital formation, displayed mixed results. More importantly, population growth, unemployment and exchange rate depreciation hurt economic growth, while gross capital formation promotes economic growth.

The findings provide strong support in favour of the Krugman (1991) hypothesis that regional trade agreements (RTAs) are a better alternative to global trade.

Our decision to disaggregate ECOWAS trade is unique and influenced largely by the objective of the study, which is to establish the type of ECOWAS trade that is a good predictor of growth. The evidence from our findings support the theory that RTAs are a better catalyst to economic growth.

We study the contemporaneous effects of US monetary policy normalization on African stock market using panel data from six African countries.

Daily data from May 1, 2013 to December 31, 2018 were used in order to accommodate the announcement effects since the US monetary policy normalization announcement was made in May 2013, while the rate hike was in December 2015. The study used the FE, RE and PMG models.

The results revealed that US 10-year bond yield and Treasury bill rate shocks negatively affect stock prices in Africa. S$P500 shock positively affects African stock prices.The result revealed that the integration of African financial market to the global financial market is a major source of vulnerability. The finding that US Treasury bill rate is a major depressant of the African stock prices reveals the short-termism of foreign polio inflows into African economies.

We provide inexorably insight into the interplay of financial systems globally. It can be useful for the purposes of generalization in developing economies in the shape of African countries. More so, this study could be replicated in another economic bloc or region with the aim of further exposing the far-reaching spillover effects of the US monetary policy normalization.

West Africa represents a very good case of a sub-region currently plagued with the problem of food insecurity. Traditional theories have attributed the increasing food insecurity in the region to problems of poor governance, corruption and climate change. In view of the persistent and increasing nature of armed conflict in the sub-region, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of increasing armed conflict on food security in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member countries.

The study utilized the dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) to investigate the effect of conflict intensity on food security in the 14 member states of the ECOWAS using annualized panel data from 2005 to 2015.

The findings reveal that armed conflict is a significant predictor of food security in West Africa.

The findings of the study bring to fore, the urgent need to rethink global initiative for combating food insecurity. The effort must also identify the causes of armed conflicts and design sound strategies for de-escalating the armed conflicts. Resolving the escalating armed conflict entails developing a conflict resolution framework that is extremely sensitive to the causes of conflict in Africa and adopting localized ex ante institutional diagnostics that would help in understanding the nature of the conflicts.

Traditional theory perceives climate change, social injustices, property right, food insecurity, religious extremism and bad governance as the predictors of armed conflicts. In this study, the authors departed from the traditional theory by demonstrating that the nature and trend of armed conflict could also pose a serious threat to food security.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the likelihood that the presence of the deposit insurance policy encourages risk appetite behavior of banks in Sub-Saharan African (SSA). It argues that financial system stability is not a function of the choice of a deposit insurance scheme, but countries' peculiarities such as quality of institutions and the macroeconomic environment.

The study used the stereotype logit regression model and covers 47 SSA countries. Countries are categorized into two: explicit and implicit DIP scheme.

The study found that corrupt countries are more likely to adopt the implicit policy, while the explicit policy exposes them to credit risk, insolvency, and negative macroeconomic shocks, a reflection of weak institutions and unhealthy competition.

Paucity of substantial local literature on institutional perspective of deposit insurance (DI) constitutes the major limitation of this study.

The sub-region, therefore, faces a conundrum - desiring a deposit insurance scheme, but lacking the required institutions to maintain either a publicly owned regulatory system or the ability to transplant the private club model.

This study contributes to the institutional perspective of DI from SSA institutional perspective.

Persistent wave of armed conflicts – militancy and terrorism – and the mono-cultural structure of the Nigerian economy, as well as extensive reliance on revenue from crude oil, highlights how external vulnerabilities, weakening internal structure and insecurity could significantly exacerbate public revenue loss. Understanding the nature, trend and impact of these factors on government revenue is one of the questions that still remain unsolved. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of global oil prices, militancy and terrorism on government revenue in Nigeria.

The study focusses on the state-failure and frustration-aggression hypotheses to explain the nature and trend of armed conflicts in Nigeria. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is used to examine the effect of global oil prices, militancy and terrorism on government revenue.

The study reveals that crude oil price, terrorism and militancy have significant negative effect on government revenue in short- and long-run Nigeria. Evidence from the study therefore supports the theory that macroeconomic fluctuation is largely determined by endogenous and exogenous factors in Nigeria.

In view of this review, future studies should empirically analyse the interactive impact of militancy, terrorism and global oil prices on government expenditure or a combination of government revenue and expenditure.

The study provides evidence on the role of internal and external factors on macroeconomic fluctuation, and recommended appropriate suite of policies that could mitigate external and internal vulnerabilities, especially during upsurge in armed conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of corporate board characteristics on the financial performance of Nigerian quoted firms. Board characteristics studied comprise board size, board skill, board nationality, board gender, board ethnicity and CEO duality.

The study employed the random‐effects and fixed‐effects generalised least squares (GLS) regression to test the six hypotheses formulated for the study, while controlling for firm size and firm age.

Using panel data from 122 quoted firms in Nigeria between 1991 and 2008, it was found that board size, CEO duality and gender diversity were negatively linked with firm performance, whereas board nationality, board ethnicity and the number of board members with a PhD qualification were found to impact positively on firm performance. The result of the robustness test using the same board characteristics for 160 small firms showed that board duality was positively linked to firm performance, while a PhD qualification was negatively linked to firm performance.

The study contributes to the understanding of the board‐performance link by examining both the traditional variables such as board size, CEO duality and other organisational attributes such as ethnic diversity, foreign nationality and competence variables represented by women and PhD holders, respectively. The results provide an insight for practitioners and policy makers on the importance of relying on institutional specifics in the prescription of corporate governance codes.

The study adds value to the global corporate governance discourse in two ways: first, the use of Nigeria, which is claimed to have one of the weakest business cultures in the world, and secondly, using a good number of proxies that are country‐specific for corporate boards.