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Capital market development has been identified as one of the critical underpinnings of economic growth, in the developed but more essentially in the developing economies. Evidence abounds on the virtues of adequately spanned capital markets to provide requisite capital needed to fund investment activities as well as infrastructural developments. Although, foreign capital may be sourced to supplement inadequate local capital base, the associated costs (both logistics and supervisory) are generally daring to consider as convenient alternatives. Various studies have examined the role of local financial market development on economic growth, but none have strictly generated a combined focus on the three major African groupings – the Southern, the Western and the Northern African regions. In addition, there is no documented study that has compared the economic performance of each of these three major economic groupings in Africa. The purpose of this paper is to fill these voids.

Various econometric techniques that include descriptive statistics, unit root tests, dynamic panel estimations and Granger causality tests.

Using data generated from the African development indicators between 1980 and 2012 in contemporary econometric estimations, this study finds that local financial markets play crucial roles in economic development of each of these groupings, albeit in varying magnitude. The study also observes that local financial market plays very little role in the overall economic development of the three groupings when interacted.

A limited dataset, which reduces the time span as well as the number of countries covered in the study. A wider coverage may have altered the result generated, especially for the pooled estimation.

That African countries should develop local financial markets in order to improve their level of economic growth.

Low rate of economic development has created a lot of social stress in Africa. Further, the fact that African leaders have largely not been able to grow their national economies in a meaningful and sustainable manner further unnerves skittish entrepreneurial underdevelopment on the continent, thereby exacerbates incidence and prevalence of poverty, and consequent social uprisings on a number of occasions.

This study finds that financial market plays an important role on economic growth, whereas the effects are lower in the Southern African region. More specifically, the effects of financial market development on economic growth are stronger in North and West Africa than in Southern African regions. Given that Southern Africa financial market is more developed than the other two regions, this finding buttresses the fact that financial market development is significantly more important as a growth-driver in less developed financial markets than in developed ones.

This paper aims to present a new master’s programme for promoting energy access and energy efficiency in Southern Africa.

A transdisciplinary approach called “participatory integrated assessment of energy systems” (PARTICIPIA) was used for the development of the curriculum. This approach is based on the two emerging fields of “multi-scale integrated assessment” and “science for governance”, which bring innovative concepts and methods.

The application of the PARTICIPIA methodology to three case studies reveals that the proposed transdisciplinary approach could support energy and development policies in the region. The implementation of the PARTICIPIA curriculum in three higher education institutions reveals its ability to respond to the needs of specific contexts and its connection with existing higher education programmes.

Considering energy issues from a transdisciplinary approach in higher education is absolutely critical because such a holistic view cannot be achieved through engineering curricula. Deliberate and greater efforts should be made to integrate methods from “multi-scale integrated assessment” and “science for governance” in higher education curricula to train a new breed of modern-day energy planners in charge of coming up with solutions that are shared by all relevant stakeholders.

This paper presents an innovative higher education curriculum in terms of the attention given to energy access and energy efficiency that affect the southern Africa region and the nature of the methodology adopted to face these issues.

Public universities in eastern and southern Africa have for a long time depended largely on grants from national governments for most of their recurrent and capital budgets. Statutes of various universities also allow them to get external aid and donations mainly for capital developments, technical assistance and staff training. In the last decade, there has been pressure on public universities in the region to cut back on their budgets as a result of declining government grants occasioned largely by political and economic structural changes. Universities are responding by putting in place a wide range of programmes to generate their own income to augment the dwindling allocation from national governments. This paper discusses current developments within universities in eastern and southern Africa in an environment of rapid technological developments.

This article seeks to answer one basic question: “Are archival institutions in the Eastern and Southern African region developing, stagnating or receding backwards?”

This article reviews the state of archives and records management in the Eastern and Southern African region. It argues that many archival services in the region have gone through a period of retardation and are in dire need of revitalization.

The article indicates that the challenges of managing electronic records are enormous and that unless measures are taken the region stands to lose much of its valuable historical and cultural heritage.

The article suggests various ways of revitalizing archival services in the Eastern and Southern African region.

Chinese direct investments play a very prominent role in economic interactions with many African countries and result in many economic effects. This study aims to identify the employment effect of Chinese direct investments in Africa.

This paper empirically investigates the employment effects of Chinese direct investments using a panel data approach over the period 2007-2012.

The results suggested that for Africa as a whole, represented in 38 countries, Chinese direct investments had a significant positive effect on employment. They also indicated that the education level supported employment. In southern Africa, represented in 32 countries, the results were the same. So, there is a need to encourage and diversify Chinese investments. However, in northern Africa, represented in six countries, the results indicated that Chinese direct investments had an insignificant effect on employment, while education still had its positive effect. Therefore, it is important for northern African Governments to ensure issues like job creation and technology transfer in any future investment projects with China.

This study is characterized by the following contributions: it deals with a gap in the economic knowledge concerning the impact of Chinese investments on employment. Most of the previous studies have focused on the determinants of these investments or on their economic growth effects. It is the first study that measures the employment impact of Chinese investments in Africa at both macro and regional levels. The study deals with the period of financial crisis and its ensuing repercussions on the movement of investments, and this makes it more reflective of current developments through the most recent data available.

Black Southern African librarians have, up to now, shied away from contact with their white counterparts in South Africa. Who could blame them for this, when the South African Library Association (SALA), in the early 1960s, deliberately closed its doors to black members? Black librarians formed their own association, the Bantu Library Association, which later became the African Library Association of South Africa (ALASA). Even though SALA re‐opened its membership to all races after it became the South African Institute of Librarianship and Information Science (SAILIS), in 1980, ALASA has continued to operate independently, and very few of its members actually attend the annual SAILIS conferences.

Recent works on the structural transformation of developing countries usually include only a few countries because of the availability of data. Beyond the resulting lack of representativeness, these works also hit a strong disparity between the labour reallocation patterns of sub-regions. This paper devoted to sub-Saharan Africa, evaluates the performance of sub-Saharan Africa, as a whole, in structural transformation using a more exhaustive database and highlights key disparities that exist between the performances of sub-Saharan African sub-regions.

With a database covering 43 sub-Saharan African countries classified into 4 sub-regions, the paper uses the shift-share method over the period 1991–2012 with sub-periods of 1991–2000 and 2000–2012.

Results show that labour reallocation in sub-Saharan Africa occurred, though weakly, towards more productive activities over the period 1991–2012. Results also show a significant disparity between sub-regions' labour reallocation pattern. While East Africa has experienced a labour reallocation towards more productive activities, West Africa has seen a labour reallocation towards activities experiencing an increase in productivity. Central Africa and Southern Africa experienced a labour reallocation towards less productive activities, and these activities know, moreover, a decrease of productivity.

Findings suggest that any political strategy purposing to coordinate structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa will result in a failure if countries' peculiarities are not taken into account.

This paper offers a representative picture of sub-Saharan Africa's structural transformation and illustrates disparities between its sub-regions' performances.

The purpose of this study is to examine the existence of discouraged worker effect hypothesis and unemployment invariance hypothesis in Africa, including its five regional groups. Specifically, the study tests the existence of co-integration between different categories of labour force participation and unemployment rate, total male and female labour force participation and the unemployment rate for age brackets 15–24, 15–64 and 15+, respectively.

The study uses the data of 52 countries in Africa which cover the period from 1991 to 2018. Three co-integration estimation techniques namely, the Kao co-integration test, Pedroni co-integration test and Westerlund co-integration test are used to validate the existence of co-integration between the labour force participation and unemployment rate. The dynamic ordinary least square is further used to explore the impact of the unemployment rate on labour force participation, while the pooled ordinary least squares (POLS) that accounts for individual country and time effects is employed for robustness check.

Except for Southern Africa, it is found that the discouraged worker effect hypothesis holds in Africa and the rest of its regions. This suggests that there is a long-run relationship between labour force participation rate and unemployment rate irrespective of age group and gender classifications. To some extent, the authors discover the existence of cross-sectional dependence in the panel. There is also an inverse relationship between labour force participation and the unemployment rate. This implies that when the unemployment rate is high, labour force participation tends to decline. The results are, however, sensitive to the choice of estimation method.

The study is limited to the examination of linear co-integration between labour force participation and the unemployment rate in Africa and its five regions. The future study can investigate the possibility of a nonlinear or an asymmetric relationship between labour for participation and the unemployment rate.

Thus, a policy framework that would generate employment creation is greatly required in Africa.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a pioneer work that addresses the issue of co-integration between labour force participation and unemployment rate for Africa and its five regions taking into consideration gender and age brackets of labour force participation and unemployment.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the e‐government status of sub‐Saharan African countries with developed and transitional countries.

The paper is based on an analysis of eRepublic.org web directory and desk research. Besides, analyses of global e‐government, digital opportunity and information society indices are used.

Wide disparities in e‐government exist within regional trading blocs in sub‐Saharan Africa with Southern Africa far ahead of east and west Africa regions. Compared with other continents, sub‐Saharan Africa lags far behind Europe, North America and Asia in e‐government. Several barriers including infrastructure, policy, legal and skill factors are identified as limiting the opportunity for sub‐Saharan Africa to move government services online.

Providing an accurate comparative picture of e‐government of sub‐Saharan Africa with developed and transitional economies is difficult because most e‐government studies hardly cover Africa. Besides, there is a general lack of reliable data about e‐government status in Africa as most government web sites are undeveloped.

Africa must invest more in infrastructure and enhance a legislative and policy framework to effectively compete with developed and transitional nations not only in e‐government, but also in international economy.

e‐Government comparative assessment of sub‐Saharan Africa with developed and transitional economies is based on several indices, thus providing a more informative picture of e‐government status in Africa. Africa can learn from the experiences and best practices of developed and transitional countries in e‐government development.

Lucrative employment in agriculture is fundamental to poverty alleviation in Africa. The paper examined employment along gender, impact of materials and proportion of female employment in African agriculture.

Time series econometrics was employed in the framework of production function analysis involving 36 years of data.

Results show that world labour in agriculture decreased from 49.77 to 40.04% but increased from 12.43 to 16.94% in Africa. World female employment in agriculture ranged from 40.56 to 42.81% and from 40.40 to 43.02% in developing economies, but decreased from 40.39 to 36.08% in developed economies. Total agricultural labour in Africa was negatively and significantly related to agricultural gross production index number (APIN).

Interaction of cattle stock and females employed in agriculture was positive and significant at pooled African values. Interaction of irrigation facilities and female labour was positive and significant in West Africa. Interaction of cattle stock and total labour in Southern Africa had negative relationship with APIN. Interaction of total labour and irrigation had negative relationship with APIN in Africa. Insufficient agricultural facilities in terms of cattle stock and irrigation infrastructure for the populace exist. It recommends increased investments to expand irrigated lands and livestock.

African governments need to use good political will to effect the needed transformation in agriculture. It is possible for agriculture to offer lucrative employment to both males and females in less developed world as in developed economies.

The paper noted very limited agricultural facilities in terms of cattle stock and irrigation facilities for the populace engaged in agriculture. It recommends investments to expand irrigated lands and livestock.