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This study assesses the relevance of foreign aid to the incidence of capital flight and unemployment in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The study is for the period 1996–2018, and the empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions in order to assess the nexuses throughout the conditional distribution of the unemployment outcome variable.

From the findings, capital flight has a positive unconditional incidence on unemployment, while foreign aid dampens the underlying positive unconditional nexus. Moreover, in order for the positive incidence of capital flight to be completely dampened, foreign aid thresholds of 2.230 and 3.964 (% of GDP) are needed at the 10th and 25th quantiles, respectively, of the conditional distribution of unemployment. It follows that the relevance of foreign aid in crowding out the unfavourable incidence of capital flight on unemployment is significantly apparent only in the lowest quantiles or countries with below-median levels of unemployment. The policy implications are discussed.

The study complements the extant literature by assessing the importance of development assistance in how capital flight affects unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of the study is to assess if a policy of female inclusive education should be complemented with a policy of female ownership of bank accounts to fight female unemployment. The study therefore examines how female ownership of bank accounts moderates the incidence of female education on female unemployment.

The focus is on 44 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2004–2018 and the empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions. The interactions are tailored such that female ownership of bank accounts influences the effect of female inclusive education on female unemployment.

From the empirical findings it is evident that female ownership of bank accounts does not effectively moderate female education in order to reduce female unemployment unless complementary policies are considered. The complementary policies should be in view of boosting the interaction between female education and female bank account ownership in increasing employment opportunities for the female gender and by extension, reducing female unemployment. The invalidity of the moderating effect is robust to the inclusion of more elements in the conditioning information set as well as accounting for other dimensions of endogeneity such as simultaneity and the unobserved heterogeneity. Policy implications are discussed.

This study contributes to the extant literature by assessing how female ownership of bank accounts complements female inclusive education to reduce female unemployment.

This paper examines household and community characteristics that influence the entry of rural households into non-farm entrepreneurship and investigates the various factors that influence the market exit of non-farm enterprises (NFEs).

The authors use data from three rounds (2011/12, 2013/14 and 2015/16) of the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). The authors employ panel logit and multilevel logit models to examine the probability of opening one or more enterprises and the enterprise exit rates.

Results indicate that the likelihood of starting a NFE is positively associated with primary education attainment, access to credit, experiencing idiosyncratic shocks and availability of formal financial institutions. Age, higher education attainment and rising farm input prices constrain entry into non-farm entrepreneurship. The enterprise exit rate is negatively associated with small-town residence, wealth, access to tar/gravel roads and cellphone communication.

Policymakers and administrators should strive to address the challenges that communities face in transportation, communication and financial services. Policies aimed at stabilizing prices and increasing access to mobile communication, primary education and road infrastructure could help expand the rural non-farm sector.

Previous studies primarily examined the determinants of participation in NFEs at a given time using cross-sectional data. The current study uses panel data to study the dynamics of NFE ownership by investigating households’ decisions to enter into or exit from the sector.

The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0611

This study aims to contribute to the extant literature by assessing how microfinance institutions (MFIs) affect female entrepreneurship, contingent on female unemployment levels.

The study focuses on 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004–2018. The empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions, which put emphasis on nations with high, low and intermediate levels of business constraints. The analysis is tailored to provide avoidable female unemployment levels in the implementation of policies designed for MFIs to promote female business ownership.

The hypotheses that MFIs are favorable for female business owners and some critical rates of female unemployment should be avoided in order for the favorable incidence to be maintained is exclusively valid in the 10th quantiles of the cost of business by females and time to start-up a business by females. Policy implications are discussed.

This study has complemented the extant literature by providing actionable female unemployment critical masses that governments can act upon in tailoring the relevance of MFIs in the doing of business by females.

This study aims to explore whether globalization and technology are harmful to health using a global panel data set of 52 countries over the period 1990–2019.

The study focused on four continents: Africa, the Americas, Asia/Oceania and Europe. The authors used four advanced econometric methodologies, which include the standard panel fixed effect (FE), Arellano–Bover/Blundell–Bond dynamic panel, Hausman–Taylor specification and two-stage least squares (FE-2SLS)/Lewbel-2SLS approaches.

The empirical evidence highlights the significance of globalization and technology in promoting global health. The findings suggest that globalization has various impacts on global health indicators and that technology is useful in tracking, monitoring and promoting global health. In addition, the empirical evidence indicates that a truly health-centred process of globalization and technological innovation can only be realized by ensuring that the interests of countries and vulnerable populations to health risks are adequately considered in international decision-making regarding global economic integration.

The authors suggest that achieving the aspiration of global health will entail the use of globalization and information technology to extend human activities and provide equal access to global health.

This study examines the relevance of information and communication technologies in the effect of gender economic inclusion on environmental sustainability.

The focus is on a panel of 42 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2005–2020. The empirical evidence is based on generalized method of moments. The environmental sustainability indicator used is CO2 emissions per capita. Three indicators of women’s economic inclusion are considered: female labour force participation, female employment and female unemployment. The chosen ICT indicators are mobile phone penetration, Internet penetration and fixed broadband subscriptions.

The results show that: (1) fixed broadband subscriptions represent the most relevant ICT moderator of gender economic inclusion for an effect on CO2 emissions; (2) negative net effects are apparent for the most part with fixed broadband subscriptions (3) both positive ICT thresholds (i.e., critical levels for complementary policies) and negative ICT thresholds (i.e., minimum ICT levels for negative net effects) are provided; (4) ICT synergy effects are apparent for female unemployment, but not for female employment. In general, the joint effect of ICTs or their synergies and economic inclusion should be a concern for policymakers in order to better ensure sustainable development. Moreover, the relevant ICT policy thresholds and mobile phone threshold for complementary policy are essential in promoting a green economy.

The study complements the extant literature by assessing linkages between information technology, gender economic inclusion and environmental sustainability.

This study investigates how enhancing information and communication technology (ICT) affects female economic participation in sub-Saharan African nations.

Three female economic participation indicators are used, namely female labour force participation, female unemployment and female employment rates. The engaged ICT variables are fixed broadband subscriptions, mobile phone penetration and Internet penetration. The Generalized Method of Moments is used for the empirical analysis.

The following main findings are established: First, there is a (1) negative net effect in the relevance of fixed broadband subscriptions in female labour force participation and female unemployment and (2) positive net effects from the importance of fixed broadband subscriptions on the female employment rate. Secondly, an extended analysis is used to establish thresholds at which the undesirable net negative effect on female labour force participation can be avoided. From the corresponding findings, a fixed broadband subscription rate of 9.187 per 100 people is necessary to completely dampen the established net negative effect. Hence, the established threshold is the critical mass necessary for the enhancement of fixed broadband subscriptions to induce an overall positive net effect on the female labour force participation rate.

This study complements the extant literature by assessing how increasing penetration levels of ICT affect female economic inclusion and by extension, thresholds necessary for the promotion of ICT to increase female economic inclusion.

Although employees' creativity is vital for firm innovation and overall performance, little is done to examine the potential association between creativity and employment. This paper investigates the contribution of employees' creativity, process and product innovations to firm-level employment growth.

The authors use data from World Bank Enterprise Survey and Innovation Follow-up Survey on 9503 firms covering the period 2012–2015 in 11 countries from sub-Saharan Africa and Heckman's two-stage estimation model.

This study's results indicate a positive role of creativity on firm-level employment growth. In addition, the authors find evidence for a complementary effect arising from the combination of creativity with managerial experience, staff level of education and their associated skills, in contrast, combining creativity with internal or external R&D results in a substitution effect. Interestingly, these synergy effects are pronounced for SMEs but absent for large firms.

Policy makers in developing economies of sub-Saharan Africa should stimulate company management to use free time offered to employees to be creative in the workplace as one of their key strategies to stimulate employment growth. This strategy is expected to be particularly fruitful among SMEs having some managerial experience and skilled stuff.

In contribution to innovative work practices and workforce creativity, the authors demonstrate that providing employees with free time could be an alternative way to enhance the focal firms' performance.

This paper aims to analyse economic growth in Africa focussing on the role of digitalization and financial sector development.

The authors employ country-level data from 36 African countries over the period 2000–2020 and used fixed effect, random effect and the Hausman–Taylor estimation techniques.

The study, first finds that, digitalization propels financial sector development in Africa. Building on this, the study further finds that, digitalization conditioned on financial sector development at best does not promote economic growth in Africa. However, results of the net effects suggest that digitalization, overall, improve economic growth in Africa.

In the current environment of a sluggish global economy, digitalization can play an important role in assisting policymakers to spur economic growth. This has attracted the attention of many researchers in the developed world. However, little is done about the subject matter in Africa.

The findings of this paper are novel in the African sub-region with important policy implications.

This paper investigates the effect of financial development on bank profitability. The authors examine whether financial development is an important determinant of bank profitability.

The ordinary least square and the generalized method of moments regression methods were used to analyze the impact of financial development on the profitability of the Nigerian banking sector.

The authors find a significant negative relationship between the financial system deposits to GDP ratio and the non-interest income of Nigerian banks. This indicates that higher financial system deposits to GDP depresses the non-interest income of Nigerian banks. The result implies that the larger the size of the Nigerian financial system, the lower the profitability of banks in Nigeria. Also, the authors observe that bank concentration, nonperforming loans, cost efficiency and the level of inflation are significant determinants of the profitability of Nigerian banks.

It is recommended that regulators should establish market-enabling policies that encourage new banks to emerge in the banking industry. The entry of new banks can lead to increase in financial system deposits and credit supply for economic growth. Regulators also need to understand the role of Nigerian banks in promoting financial development and find ways to collaborate with banks towards financial sector development. Another implication of the findings for asset managers is that asset managers will need to take into account the prevailing level of financial development, particularly the size of the financial system, in their asset pricing and investment decisions. This will ensure that investors get value for their investments in Nigeria. The financial implication of the study is that the level of financial development in Nigeria can improve the finance-growth linkages in Nigeria through the efficient allocation of credit and capital to crucial sectors of the Nigerian economy to spur growth in those sectors.

Evidence dealing with how financial development affects the profitability of the banking sector in African countries is scarce in the literature, and is completely absent for Nigeria. This paper addresses this research gap.