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This chapter offers a survey of education development in Sub-Saharan Africa, dynamics of global forces and Sub-Saharan African context. First, the regional context of Sub-Saharan Africa is surveyed. This is followed first by an overview of the incoming tide of global forces impinging on education in the sub-continent, followed by a discussion of education developments in Sub-Saharan Africa as co-shaped by contextual contours. It transpires that the contextual realities of sub-Sahara Africa not only have a powerful mediating role on the impact of global forces but also are in their own right an agency in shaping the education response of societies in the region. The other common thread running through the chapter is the lack of knowledge explicating the interrelationship between education and societal context in the region. This lacunus is evident from the fact that no country in the region has ever been included in international surveys such as the TALIS survey, to lack of research on, for example, informal settlements or the informal economy and its intersection with education. Such research, when placed on the Comparative and International Education research agenda, will not only be of significance to Sub-Sahara Africa, but also to the entire world, many aspects of the contextual architecture of the region are becoming increasingly evident world-wide.

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.

Seeks to argue that the peculiarities of sub‐Saharan Africa, in terms of its socio‐cultural diversity, low economic development, linguistic factors, HIV/AIDS pandemic, gender discrimination, low ICT awareness and so on, demand a new model of addressing the digital divide.

Paper largely based on literature survey and an assessment of the existing models of addressing global digital divide.

Sub‐Saharan Africa has certain peculiarities in high levels of poverty, high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, repressive regimes, civil wars, diversity of cultural and linguistic factors, gender discrimination, etc. that require new models for bridging the digital divide and that recognise the uniqueness of the sub‐continent.

More research is needed to determine new models of bridging the digital divide that can help sub‐Saharan Africa to leapfrog into the information age.

More attention is needed to alleviate poverty and meet people's basic needs for livelihood if attempts to integrate ICT into their lives are to be effective.

Sub‐Saharan Africa has largely relied on models of the developed countries to bridge the digital divide without paying close attention to how various technologies can effectively be integrated in the lives of the people to alleviate poverty and consequently stimulate ICT uptake. This paper provides some solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to map and visualise collaboration patterns and citation impact of the library and information science research in sub-Saharan Africa between 1995 and 2016.

Data were extracted from the Thomson Reuters’ citation indexes using the name of the country in an advanced search platform. The search was limited to documents designated as articles. Data were analysed using the VosViewer software to obtain network maps and frequencies of occurrence.

The findings reveal that publication and citation impact of LIS research in sub-Saharan Africa has continued to grow since 1995; foreign countries have immensely contributed to the evolution and development of LIS research in the region; research collaboration occurs both regionally and internationally, with the latter being the most prominent; South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are the most active participants in LIS research collaboration in the region; and that on average, international collaboration in LIS research in sub-Saharan Africa attracts more citations than other types of collaboration.

The study was limited to the data indexed in the Web of Science citation indexes and focused on sub-Saharan African countries only.

Collaboration is said to lead to increased research output and impact, hence the need for sub-Saharan African researchers and institutions to initiate strategies that will create conducive environments for research collaboration. There is need for collaborative ventures between LIS practitioners and educators as well as increased cooperation among LIS schools within and outside of sub-Saharan African countries. Partnerships involving students and programmes such as research fellowship, post-doctoral researchers as well as visiting researchers may complement any existing strategies that can be pursued to increase collaborative research in LIS in the region.

The paper, while drawing lessons from previous papers, adopted a variety of techniques to examine collaboration patterns and impact of LIS research over a longer period of publication time, i.e. 1995 to 2016, and a larger geographic scope.

Knowledge‐based societies have come to be identified with the advanced economies. Knowledge is now looked on as a new source of competitive advantage. Those economies where knowledge is created and used in large quantities may be said to enjoy a competitive advantage over those that do not create and use knowledge in large quantities. Sub‐Saharan Africa is one region which needs to have access to global knowledge for its economic development. However, there are several impediments to promoting access to global knowledge in sub‐Saharan Africa. The impediments are identified in the study and solutions to the impediments proposed. Research methods used are highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight important contemporary themes in international marketing strategy from the perspective of Sub-Saharan African firms.

The approach adopted is a review and synopsis of the existing body of research on international marketing research in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a discussion of the manuscripts included in the special issue.

International marketing in Sub-Sahara Africa is growing steadily, driven largely by rapid changes in socio-economic and demographic characteristics of consumers in this market. The growing appetite of multinational enterprises to explore new growth opportunities on this continent and the increasing intra-Africa cross-border transactions is driving unique approaches to international marketing that are predicated on using non-traditional means to produce, communicate and distribute products and services.

While the international marketing opportunities and challenges discussed in this paper are not exhaustive, the paper highlights important research themes that need consideration regarding international marketing research in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This introductory paper emphasizes the unique international business landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa and discusses its international marketing strategy implications. The paper further draws attention to a number of unanswered research questions that require additional research, and thus bring Sub-Saharan Africa to international marketing scholarly enquiry.

This paper presents a state-of-the-field review of progress toward the ideal of Education for All in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. First, the significance of Education for All in Sub-Saharan Africa is clarified. Then, the beginnings of formal education in Sub-Saharan Africa (i.e., nineteenth century missionary education) are discussed, followed by colonial education. This is followed by an overview of post-independence strategies and initiatives aimed at the expansion of education. The Outline of a Plan for African Educational Development, drafted by a meeting of Ministers of Education of African states (MINEDAF) immediately after independence, 1961, is discussed, followed by the resolutions taken at the seven MINEDAF conferences held since 1961 till the present day. The resulting strategies and initiatives aimed at bringing education to all are discussed and evaluated. The impact of structural adjustment programs signed in recent years by most governments of African countries with the World Bank is also addressed. In conclusion, the present state of education in Sub-Saharan Africa and the prospects and challenges of Education for All are summarized.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a conceptual interpretation of the role business families play in the institutional context of sub-Saharan Africa, characterised by voids within the formal institutional setting. Responding to calls to take a holistic perspective of the institutional environment, we develop a conceptual model, showcasing the emergence of relational familial logics within business families that enable these enterprising organisations to navigate the political, economic and socio-cultural terrain of this institutional context.

The authors undertake a review of extant literature on institutional theory, institutional voids, family business and business families and examine the relevance of these theoretical constructs in relation to the institutional environment of Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors offer tentative propositions within our conceptualisation, which the authors discuss in an inductive fashion.

The review underlines the relevance of informal political, economic and socio-cultural institutions within the sub-Saharan context, within which the family as an institution drives business families engagement in institutional entrepreneurship. In doing so, the authors argue business families are best positioned to navigate the existing Sub-Saharan African institutional context. The authors underline the critical relevance of the embeddedness of social relationships that underpin relational familial logic within the sub-Saharan African collectivist socio-cultural system.

By challenging the assumptions that institutional voids are empty spaces devoid of institutions, the authors offer an alternative view that institutional voids are spaces where there exists a misalignment of formal and informal institutions. The authors argue that in such contexts within Sub-Saharan Africa, business families are best placed to harness their embeddedness within extended family and community for entrepreneurial activity. The authors argue that family and business logics may complement each other rather than compete. The discussions and propositions have implications for future research on business families and more inclusive forms of family organisations.

This paper aims to investigate whether Sub-Saharan African countries are catching up with the rest of the world in terms of online usage. Online service usage is an important component of the discourse of the “digital divide”, an emblematic term for the inequality of information and communication technology access.

This paper is a quantitative analysis of internet and Facebook penetration coupled with economic strength (GDP/capita), literacy and degree of rural population.

The findings reveal a heterogeneous pattern with a few African countries being digital oases and close to European levels, whereas the majority of the countries are still digital deserts. A strong correlation is found between economic strength and internet penetration. A generalist picture that Sub-Saharan is on the trajectory of closing the digital divide is an imprecise reflection of the reality.

It is argued that instead of measuring supply-side data, which has been the trend till now, the use of demand-side elements such as online service usage tells more about digital inequalities between countries.

The research encourages internet firms to open up their eyes for Sub-Saharan Africa as an investment opportunity with an untapped gap of online usage.

The three-billion internet users on the planet are unevenly spread and under-represented in Africa. By drawing a heterogeneous online usage landscape, digital policy can be accurately steered toward countries with the largest needs.

There is a paucity of research going into the depth of online usage in Africa. The paper is a contribution to fill that gap.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the short and long run causal relationship between stock market development and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa within the period 1990 and 2020.

Using panel data from 1990–2020 obtained from the World Bank development indicators, the study makes use of the autoregressive distributed lag model and the Granger causality and cointegration to analyze the long and short run causal relationship between stock market development and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa.

The findings unveiled that stock market capitalization had a positive and significant effect on economic growth in the long run and a negative insignificant effect in the short run within the period of 1990–2020 while stock market liquidity measured through total value of shares traded and turnover ratio had a negative and significant effect on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa within the period of 1990–2020. The Granger causality test showed an inconclusive result between stock market development and economic growth; implying that the authors cannot say if it is stock market development that causes economic growth or it is economic growth that causes stock market development within the period of 1990–2020.

The findings suggest that governments of sub-Saharan African countries should encourage stock market development by implementing favorable rules for companies listing on their stock market, promote stock market integration with world markets to diversify risk, increase public awareness on stock markets, increase investors' confidence level and finally, remove stock market impediments like high taxes, legal and regulatory barriers to its development.

This study contributes to the existing literature by offering a whole new perspective on stock market development and economic growth since its conception in sub-Saharan Africa. Again, contrary to other papers, the study show how stock market development can contribute to the growth of sub-Saharan Africans’ economy.