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This study is aimed at providing a deduction on the necessity of social and cultural capital for entrepreneurial outcomes on a community-wide scale.

There is a drift from an individualised form of entrepreneurship to community-based entrepreneurship with a grand focus on social needs of current and emergent nature. This study is both archival and exploratory and has pictured culture and communality as drivers that are needful for enterprising communities.

This paper finds communality, social network, social capital and trust as push-factors for community-based entrepreneurship and development drives.

This study is an original exposé on the Abia Ohafia community’s Model of community-based entrepreneurship which thrives on strong institutions (like the Age Grade System) and age-long practices that have built trust and stability. This local community through its networks, culture and communalities creates relationships, rational innovation, consensual leadership and participatory followership under which resources, opportunities and solutions are deliberately advanced for meeting social and community purposes.

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 main aim of this study was to examine whether any relationship exists between energy consumption and value added of the agricultural and industrial sector as well as the overall growth rate of the Nigerian economy.

The study used annualized time series data from 1971 to 2014 drawn from the World Bank Development Indicators, adopting an autoregressive distributed lag technique in the data analyses as well as the bound test and error correction representation.

There is a very strong evidence of the existence of a long-run relationship between energy consumption and indicators of economic growth. There are very strong proofs that economic growth and agricultural value added adjust to the shocks and dynamics of the studied energy-consumption-related variables while manufacturing value added proved otherwise.

No study to the best of our knowledge has brought together aggregate growth, agricultural value added and manufacturing value added in the investigation of the energy consumption and economic growth nexus in one study using the Nigerian stylized economic environment. This represents the value added of this study and shows its originality.

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.

This study aims to investigate in a country-specific comparative and panel form, the impact of energy use on financial development in Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)-African countries of Algeria, Gabon, Libya and Nigeria.

With data sets covering the period 1980 to 2020, this study used a combination of country-specific autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) and panel-ARDL as well geo-maps to show the spatiotemporal nuances of the investigated countries.

It was discovered across the investigated countries and in the panel framework that energy consumption significantly impacts both bank development and institutional development, which are subsets of financial development. In addition, evidence in favor of adjustment of financial development to the shocks and dynamics of energy consumption was found.

Integrative developmental drive for the two sectors can enhance growth and value-chain interactions for the imperatives of the overall growth and development of the OPEC-African countries.

This study adds to the literature on finance and energy development by the introduction of the spatiotemporal analysis.

This study investigated the interactive impact of global and domestic stock market variables on the depth of the financial system in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1990 to 2018.

The study used the mean group and pooled mean group estimators for the dynamic heterogeneous panel.

The results provide strong statistical evidence that the depth of the financial system in SSA countries is influenced by a combination of local and international stock market indicators. While the local variables exert a positive influence, the global indicator tends to negatively affect the depth of the system, particularly the monetization ratio.

While the tendency of portfolio adjustments and reversal can be inferred, the study stresses the need for a more globalized approach to financial policy formulation and implementation even as the trend of global financializaton gets more robust and more profound.

This study is unique in that, unlike prior ones, it has extended the debate on the role of the stock market in financial deepening from a domestic to an international dimension. Financial policy making can be aided by the authors' findings through looking at the financial deepening-stock market linkage from both domestic and globalized perspectives.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the energy–growth linkage in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), with emphasis on real sectors’ contribution to aggregate growth using dynamic panel estimation techniques that are practically and conceptually superior to the static models.

Dynamic panel econometric techniques pooled mean group, mean group and dynamic fixed effect were used to investigate the linkage among energy consumption, real sector value added and economic growth from 1967 to 2016 in 48 SSA countries.

A strong empirical evidence in favor of energy dependence and growth hypothesis in the investigated SSA countries was found. The finding that real sector value added and overall growth rate adjust reasonably to the shocks and dynamics of the energy consumption variables makes energy consumption an enabler for growth. This indicates that well thought-out and implemented energy development policy will not only increase energy consumption but also elicit multi-sectoral growth while addressing the obvious energy deficiency in the SSA region.

It is also important to note the policy implications of the high adjustment profiles indicated by the error correction representations. All the speeds of adjustment of the three models denominated in time are slightly above a year and are all within predictable limits (they fall below unity or 100%). We found that when agriculture value added, manufacturing value added and overall economic growth rate in our SSA panel estimation exceed equilibrium levels as a result of deviations arising from energy related variables, downward adjustments at 66%, 62% and 78% per year, respectively, take place.

The study indicates that well thought-out and implemented energy development policy will not only increase energy consumption but also elicit multi-sectoral growth while addressing the obvious energy deficiency in the SSA region.

Much as this study has made some addition to the literature on energy-growth nexus in the SSA region, which undoubtedly is an unveiling of economic forces in a collection of developing and energy deficient economies, it will be of great research significance if the form and style of this study is adopted for other economic blocs in the shapes and sizes of the SSA region.

This study ensured currency of data, novelty of approach and disaggregated energy consumption into emerging sources, traditional sources and geographical access.

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 make a comparative study of the applicability of the purchasing power parity (PPP) in selected less developing countries (LDCs) on one hand and European countries on the other hand.

The research design is empirical and ex post facto. This study uses an assortment of co-integration tests and error correction representation. The chosen approach allows for the consideration of long-run elasticities and the dynamics of the short-run adjustment of exchange rates to changes in domestic and foreign prices. Monthly data are used for the period 1980:1 through 2015:12 (i.e. 432 observations).

Results from long-run co-integration analysis, short-run error correction models and persistence profile analysis overwhelmingly confirm the validity of PPP in these two sets of countries regardless the disparity in their relative exchange rate and price characteristics.

Curiously, several of these empirical studies and still many more, have focused their attention on the experiences of industrialized countries, with a few investigations devoted to LDCs. The evidence is even scarcer in Africa. Clearly, the acceptance of any hypothesis as a credible explanation of economic reality hinges on the robustness of the hypothesis across countries with different economic and institutional frameworks.

Knowledge of the extent to which exchange rate and relative prices can be linked in the long run is important for the design and management of inflation and the implementation of monetary policy. For instance, policy actions aimed at stabilizing the domestic economy can obtain results that are, at best, uncertain in the absence of correct characterization of the PPP dynamics. Moreover, structural and macroeconomic adjustment programs implemented in these countries to achieve economic growth and external competitiveness could be unsuccessful if flawed estimates of PPP exchange rates are retained.

Several empirical studies have been done to prove the validity or otherwise of the PPP. Unlike prior authors, this study makes a comparative study of the applicability of the PPP in selected LDC on one hand and European countries.

The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of why the poorest, most disadvantaged groups such as rural African women, benefit less from microfinance. The authors focus on the perception and experiences of ordinary rural entrepreneurial women on microfinance in a context of extreme poverty and where family responsibility and economic activities are closely intertwined.

The authors purposefully sampled 15 poor females with small businesses in two Nigerian villages. The key characteristic guiding the sampling was that the respondents had to be poor. The authors held two focus groups and ten interviews to capture their experience and understanding of microfinance. The authors used thematic analysis to establish patterns in the data.

For poor entrepreneurial women, a livelihood for survival, putting food on the table and paying school fees are priorities, not business growth. They see microcredit as debt and a great risk that could lead to irreversible losses. Family responsibilities for basic consumption needs of the household can affect their ability to repay loans; perceived dangers of microcredit may outweigh potential benefits.

The theories, especially functionalist economic theory, do not take account of microfinance users’ experiences.

Microfinance should be aware that the poorest perceive microcredit differently and should eliminate the intimidating barriers raised to them. Instead of providing a means for the poor to alleviate poverty or coping strategies for them to manage cash flows and risks, microfinance causes fear and anxiety by demanding high rate of return in a very short period of time.

The very poorest, who should be the beneficiaries of microfinance, are less likely to be able to benefit. The condition of poverty creates different realities for those at the base of the pyramid.

This research questions the neoliberal rationality assumptions that microfinance rest on; the paper fills a gap in the literature, i.e. how the potential borrowers themselves living in deep-rooted poverty perceive and experience microfinance.