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The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that will demonstrate how the integration of Salam (exclusive agricultural commodity trade) with Takaful (micro-Takaful – a subdivision of Islamic insurance) and value chain can address major challenges facing the agricultural sector in Kano State, Nigeria.

The study conducted a thorough and critical analysis of relevant literature and existing models of financing agriculture in Nigeria to come up with the proposed model.

The findings indicate that measures undertaken to address the major challenges fail. In view of this, this study proposed Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain model to solve a number of challenges such as poor access to financing, poor marketing and pricing, delay, collateral requirement and risk issues in order to avail farmers with easy access to finance and provide effective security to financial institutions.

The paper is limited to using secondary data. Therefore, empirical investigation can be carried out to strengthen the validation of the model.

The study outcome seeks to improve the productivity of the farmers through enhancing their access to finance. This will increase their level of production and provide more employment opportunities. In addition, it will boost financial inclusion, income generation, poverty alleviation, standard of living, food security and overall economic growth and development.

The novelty of this study lies in the integration of classical Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain and create a unique model structure which the researchers do not come across in any research that presented it in Nigeria.

This study forecasts the government expenditure components in Nigeria, including recurrent and capital expenditures for 2021 and 2022, based on data from 1981 to 2020.

The study employs statistical/econometric problems using the Feasible Quasi Generalized Least Squares approach. Expenditure forecasts involve three simulation scenarios: (1) do nothing where the economy follows its natural path; (2) an optimistic scenario, where the economy grows by specific percentages and (3) a pessimistic scenario that defines specific economic contractions.

The estimation model is informed by Wagner's law specifying a positive link between economic activities and public spending. Model estimation affirms the expected positive relationship and is relevant for generating forecasts. The out-of-sample results show that a higher proportion of the total government expenditure (7.6% in 2021 and 15.6% in 2022) is required to achieve a predefined growth target (5%).

This study offers empirical evidence that specifically requires Nigeria to invest a ratio of 3 to 1 or more in capital expenditure to recurrent expenditure for the economy to be guided on growth.

This study aims to evaluate how audit committee (AC) characteristics affect the performance of banks in Africa.

The authors manually generated unbalanced panel data from 78 commercial banks operating in twelve (12) countries whose annual reports were published on the website of African Financials between 2010 and 2020.

The results indicate that AC size has an insignificant positive association with bank performance (return on equity and Tobin’s Q). AC independence has a significant positive association with bank performance. However, AC gender diversity has a significant negative association with bank performance. Besides, AC financial expertise has a significant positive and negative association with return on equity and Tobin’s Q, respectively.

The study considered only 78 banks that operate in twelve (12) African countries. Besides, the authors consider only four (4) AC attributes.

The findings suggest the need to maintain a smaller AC, appoint more independent members to AC, reduce the number of women appointed to AC and ensure most AC members have financial expertise. These measures could improve bank performance in Africa.

Unlike previous African studies that are mostly restricted to a country level, the study examined how AC attributes influence the performance of banks that operate in Africa.

Financial inclusion provides access to financial infrastructure, facilitating money transfers. Therefore, blockchain and cryptocurrencies might boost worldwide financial acceptance. However, the UAE has one of the lowest cryptocurrency adoption rates. This study explores the UAE customer adoption and use of cryptocurrencies.

Using a scale, the authors created a structural model and obtained 270 responses from a snowball-distributed online questionnaire, assessed by five cryptocurrency specialists.

Performance expectations (PE), price value (PV), Hedonic motivation (HM) and consumer innovativeness (CI) were the most significant predictors of behavioural intention (BI). Surprisingly, BI is not a reliable indication of actual consumption. Facilitating conditions (FC) are the most accurate predictor of cryptocurrency usage (CU), indicating that adoption might be increased by providing the necessary structures and processes to lead users.

This research adds to the body of knowledge by examining the adoption and implementation of cryptocurrencies in the UAE and by developing and evaluating new constructs based on current notions. The study also contributes to the current understanding of cryptocurrencies and blockchain adoption.

The conclusions of the research advise marketers on how to boost the commercialisation of cryptocurrencies in the UAE market and may pave the way for other studies to assist impending developments in the UAE cryptocurrency industry.

This research offers novel insights into significant predictors of cryptocurrency product uptake in the financial and banking business.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the long-run and short-run drivers of real house prices in Nigeria from 1991Q1 to 2020Q4.

Vector autoregression and cointegration tests were used to assess the key drivers of Nigeria’s real house prices in the long run and short run.

The empirical findings revealed that household disposable income is the most important determinant of house prices in Nigeria. House prices increased by 1.6% and 60.8% in response to a 1% increase in disposable income in the long run and short run, respectively, while real mortgage credits pushed up house prices by 5% and have no long-run effects, suggesting that most Nigerians depend on their money income rather than credits in securing a home. In addition, prices of oil sector products and real interest rates had negative and significant relationship with house prices, while positive correlations were found for real effective exchange rate and real housing investments regardless of the time horizon. The impact of construction costs and cement prices was also documented.

This is likely a pioneering study of its kind to focus on the determinants of real house prices in Nigeria. It is probably the first study, the best of the author’s knowledge, to empirically examine the impact of the oil sector on house prices in the country.

This study evaluated the effect of macroeconomic factors on residential real estate (RE) investment returns in the cities of Abuja and Lagos, Nigeria, with a view to guiding RE investors and researchers.

A survey research design was employed using a questionnaire to collect RE transaction data from 2008 to 2022 from estate surveying and valuation firms in the study areas. Rental and capital value data collected were used to construct rental and capital value indices and total returns on investment. The macroeconomic data used were retrieved from the archives of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Granger causality (GC) and multiple regression models were adopted to evaluate the effect of selected macroeconomic variables on residential RE investment returns in the study areas.

The study found a progressive upward movement in rental and capital values of residential RE investment in the study areas within the study period. Total and risk-adjusted returns on investment were equally positive within the study period. Only the inflation rate, unemployment rate and real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita were found to be the major determinants of residential RE investment returns in the study areas within the study period.

The secrecy associated with property transaction information/data by RE practitioners in the study areas posed a challenge. Property transaction data were not adequately kept in a way for easier access and retrieval in many of the estate firms and agent offices. Consequently, there was a lack of data that spanned the study period in some of the sampled estate firms or agent offices. This data collection challenge was, however, overcome by the excess time spent retrieving the required data for this study to ensure that the findings appropriately answer the research questions.

Inflation and GDP per capita have been found to be significant factors that influence residential RE investment performance in the study areas. Therefore, investors should pay attention to these identified macroeconomic factors for residential RE investment in the study areas whilst making investment decisions in order to mitigate a possible loss of income or return. The government should formulate and implement economic policies that would address the current high unemployment and inflation rates in Nigeria at large.

This study has extended and further enriched the existing body of knowledge in the field of RE investment analysis in Nigeria. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to adopt the Cornish Fisher value-at-risk and modified Sharpe ratio models to analyse risk and risk-adjusted returns on residential RE investment, respectively, in Nigeria. It has therefore redirected the focus of RE researchers and practitioners to a more objective approach to RE investment performance analysis in Nigeria.

The role institutional quality plays in the rising pace of globalization and its associated health effects remain unclear in the literature. This study, therefore, empirically examined the moderating role of institutional quality on the globalization-health outcomes nexus in Nigeria, a country with a relatively weak health system.

The study employed Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) to estimate the empirical models. The Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) and Canonical Cointegration Regression (CCR) techniques were thereafter used to check the consistency and robustness of our results. Annual time-series data spanning from 1984 to 2020 were sourced from the World Development Indicator, KOF Globalization Index, International Countries Risk Guide (ICRG) and Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin databases.

The results revealed that overall globalization and its three dimensional components (economic, political and social globalization) adversely affect life expectancy in their separate models, but increased life expectancy significantly after their interaction with government effectiveness. Also, real GDP, health aids, government recurrent health expenditure are other determinants of life expectancy in Nigeria.

The Nigerian government should put in place appropriate mechanisms directed toward building and sustaining government effectiveness. This will help mitigate the negative effects of globalization and utilize its net positive benefits to improve life expectancy in Nigeria.

The research is the first to comprehensively examine the moderating impact of institutional quality on the nexus between overall globalization as well as its three dimensional components (economic, political and social) on health outcomes in Nigeria.

This paper aims to investigate the determinants of global interest in central bank digital currency (CBDC). It assessed whether global interest in sustainable development and cryptocurrency are determinants of global interest in CBDC.

Google Trends data were analyzed using two-stage least square regression estimation.

There is a significant positive relationship between global interest in sustainable development and global interest in CBDC. There is a significant positive relationship between global interest in cryptocurrency and global interest in the Nigeria eNaira CBDC. There is a significant negative relationship between global interest in CBDC and global interest in the eNaira CBDC. There is a significant positive relationship between global interest in CBDC and global interest in the China eCNY. There is a significant negative relationship between global interest in cryptocurrency and global interest in the Sand Dollar and DCash.

The literature has not empirically examined whether global interest in sustainable development and cryptocurrency are factors motivating global interest in CBDC. This study fills a gap in the literature by investigating whether global interest in sustainable development and cryptocurrency are factors motivating global interest in CBDC.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the multinational oil companies’ (MOCs) corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of the global memorandum of understanding (GMoU) on mainstreaming gender sensitivity in cash crop market supply chains in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

This paper adopts an explanatory research design with a mixed method to answer the research questions and test the hypotheses. A total of 1,200 rural women respondents were sampled across the Niger Delta region.

Results from the use of a combined logit model and propensity score matching indicate a significant relationship between the GMoU model and mainstreaming gender sensitivity in cash crop market supply chains in the Niger Delta.

This study implies that MOCs’ CSR interventions that improve women’s access to land and encourage better integration of food markets through improved roads and increased mobile networks would enable women to engage in cash crop production.

This implies that improving access to credit through GMoU cluster farming targeted at female farmers would improve access to finance and extension services for women in cash crop production in the Niger Delta.

This research contributes to the gender debate in the agricultural value chain from a CSR perspective in developing countries and is rational for demands for social projects by host communities. It concludes that businesses have an obligation to help solve problems of public concern.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the likely causes of failure of some sections of road pavements in Ajaokuta, Northcentral Nigeria. This was achieved through a geotechnical assessment of subgrade soils in affected areas.

The methods entailed field and laboratory methods and statistical analysis. Subgrade soil samples were retrieved from a depth of 1,000 mm beneath the failed portions using a hang auger. The soils were analyzed for natural moisture content (NMC), Atterberg limit (liquid limit, plastic limit and linear shrinkage), grain size distribution, compaction and California bearing ratio (CBR), respectively.

The results of the geotechnical tests ranged from NMC (12.5%–19.4%), sand (84%–98%), fines (2%–16%), LL (16.0%–32.2%), PL (17%–27.5%), LS (2.7%–6.4%), PI (2.5%–18.4%), maximum dry density (1756 kg/m2–1961 kg/m2), optimum moisture content (13.2%–20.2%), unsoaked CBR (15.5%–30.5%) and soaked CBR (8%–22%), respectively. Pearson’s correlation coefficient performed on the variables showed that some parameters exhibited a strong positive correlation with r2 > 0.5.

Funding was the main limitation.

Comparing the results with Nigerian standards for road construction, and the AASHTO classification scheme, the subgrade soils are competent and possess excellent to good properties. The soils also exhibited very low plasticity, a high percentage of sand, high CBR and low NMC, which implies that it has the strength required for road pavement subgrades. The likely causes of the failures are, therefore, due to the use of poor construction materials, technical incompetence and poor compaction of sub-base materials, respectively.