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This paper aims to review the current status of wheat production, farming systems, production constraints and wheat demand-supply chain analysis; the role of international and national breeding programs and their approaches in wheat genetic improvement including targeting mega environments, shuttle breeding, doubled haploids, marker-assisted selection and key location phenotyping; and future prospects and opportunities of wheat production in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA).

Relevant literature works have been used and cited accordingly.

Though traditionally wheat was not the leading staple crop in SSA, it is becoming an important food crop because of rapid population growth associated with increased urbanization and change in food preference for easy and fast food such as bread, biscuits, pasta, noodles and porridge. In 2013, total wheat consumption in SSA reached 25 million tons with import accounting for 17.5 million tons at a price of USD6 billion, while during the same period the region produces only 7.3 million tons on a total area of 2.9 million hectares. The low productivity (2t/ha) in the region is principally because of abiotic (drought and heat) and biotic (yellow rust, stem rust, septoria and fusarium) stresses which are increasing in intensity and frequency associated with climate change. Furthermore, increased cost of production, growing populations, increased rural-urban migration, low public and private investments, weak extension systems and policies, and low adoption rates of new technologies remain to be major challenges for wheat production in SSA. Wheat breeding in SSA is dominantly carried out by National Agricultural Research Systems, in partnership with the international research centers [International center for improvement of maize and wheat (CIMMYT) and International center for agricultural research in the dry areas (ICARDA)], to develop high yielding and widely adapted wheat genotypes with increased water-use efficiency, heat tolerance and resistance to major diseases and pests. Most of the cultivars grown in SSA are originated from the international research centers, CIMMYT and ICARDA.

This paper will help to promote available wheat technologies in SSA by creating awareness to wheat scientists, extension agents and policymakers.

This manuscript is an original review paper which has not been published in this form elsewhere.

This article examines why Universal Primary Education (UPE) has shifted from being a developing country challenge more broadly in the last half of the 20th century to become largely a sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) challenge today. It discusses a number of national and education sector system-wide challenges that have constrained the implementation of UPE in SSA more so than in other developing regions.

This article reviews the literature and policy documents on a wide range of developing country issues, and discusses why most SSA countries have faced unparalleled challenges in achieving UPE.

SSA governments should take the opportunity offered by their post-pandemic “build back better” efforts to fundamentally reset education policies to address the key causes of this major development failure. The overarching objective must be to develop education systems that are more inclusive, equitable and responsive to national development needs by better serving the large population groups, parts of society and economic sectors that currently derive little benefit from public education spending. This article highlights the urgency and challenges associated with achieving this objective.

Although the main responsibility lies with SSA governments, this paper stresses that the global community will be affected in many ways by how effectively this crisis is addressed. Therefore, this effort merits sustained global support including through more catalytic use of aid.

Increased economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has given rise to increased demand for port development. Given the often scarce availability of national public funding, port institutional reform programmes have been implemented to pave the way for the inclusion of external port investors. Notwithstanding this fact, some sub-Saharan African Governments remain institutionally locked into the notion that state-owned enterprises remain an appropriate vehicle for port terminal operations. This, despite the fact that terminal operational concessions globally and within the continent of Africa are increasingly being managed by global terminal operators. Given this context, this study aims to evaluate different port valuation and funding strategies. Two research questions form the core of this research: what is the financial value of a concession? What is the most cost advantageous funding strategy? The methodology is applied to the development of a two-berth container terminal in SSA.

After reviewing a range of financial valuation and funding techniques, the study presents valuation and funding model applicability-fit tests. Thereafter, a suitable valuation technique is selected and applied to the case study providing a concession valuation. Different funding strategies are applied to the valuation model to determine the cost implications of each funding instrument given the local context and institutional constraints applicable to SSA. Finally, the study discusses the significance of the results to potential SSA port investors by highlighting the impact of each funding approach on key financial metrics.

The study presents a range of financial investment appraisal results for the case study concession in consideration of four specific funding strategies. The highest concession valuation could be attributed to a higher debt ratio as a principal funding strategy. In addition, this funding approach (100% debt) realised the shortest payback period and the highest internal rate of return values. The authors, however, maintain that the optimal funding strategy for a concession depends ultimately on the financial goals of the investor.

This research makes a contribution to the existing literature on port finance and development by presenting a structured approach to the evaluation of the valuation and funding techniques, which can be used in terminal development subject to the specific local context and institutional constraints (in this case applicable to SSA). The study provides practical insight into the potential cost of the considered terminal concession for private or public sector participants and a view of the most cost advantageous funding strategy available for interested investors.

Incidents of violence perpetrated through digital technology platforms or facilitated by these means have been reported, often in high-income countries. Very little scholarly attention has been given to the nature of technology-facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA) across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) despite an explosion in the use of various technologies. We conducted a literature review to identify and harmonize available data relating to the types of TFVA taking place in SSA. This was followed by an online survey of young adults through the SHYad.NET forum to understand the nature of TFVA among young adults in SSA. Our literature review revealed various types of TFVA to be happening across SSA, including cyberbullying, cyberstalking, trolling, dating abuse, image-based sexual violence, sextortion, and revenge porn. The results of our online survey revealed that both young men and women experience TFVA, with the most commonly reported TFVA being receiving unwanted sexually explicit images, comments, emails, or text messages. Female respondents more often reported repeated and/or unwanted sexual requests online via email or text message while male respondents more often reported experiencing violent threats. Respondents used various means to cope with TFVA including blocking the abuser or deleting the abused profile on social media.

This study investigates the relationship between economic growth, international trade, and environmental degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), focusing on the validity of the environmental Kuznets hypothesis (EKC), the pollution havens hypothesis (PHH), and the factor endowment hypothesis (FEH).

The study uses annual data for 41 SSA countries between 1990 and 2017 and employs the bias-corrected least square dummy variable (LSDVC) estimation techniques. Environmental degradation is indicated by carbon dioxide (CO₂), delicate particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions, and deforestation.

The results confirm the validity of the EKC hypothesis for PM2.5 emissions and deforestation but not for CO₂ emissions. The results also indicate that international trade reduces deforestation and that both the PHH and FEH are valid for CO₂ emission but not for PM2.5 emissions and deforestation.

In this paper, the authors are able to illustrate that both economic growth and international trade can harm the environment if unchecked. Therefore, the conclusion of this study offers policy options through which SSA countries can achieve desired economic growth goals without affecting environmental quality. The study can be a benchmark for environmental policy in the region.

The authors provide an in-depth discussion of the growth-trade-environmental degradation nexus in SSA. The EKC, PHH, and FEH’s validity confirm that economic growth remains a threat to the local natural environment in SSA. Hence, the need for a trade-off between economic growth needs and environmental degradation and understanding where to compromise to achieve SSA's economic development priorities.

African countries are endowed with both human and natural resources. These resources constitute integral components for any economic development due to the long-lasting relationship with all sectors in an economy, yet there is an obvious disagreement between growing economy and employment generation in Africa. Though there has been a growing pattern of economic size, particularly the gross domestic product (GDP) among African countries, most of these economies are low in human development. The disagreement between economic growth and employment generation in Africa despite abundant natural resources located on the continent calls for public discourse among scholars. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine the peculiar drivers of unemployment intensity in a region characterized by endowed resources.

The paper adopts two approaches; the authors employed the pooled mean group (PMG) estimator and utilised stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to generate a government efficiency index between the period 1991 and 2017 among sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries.

The empirical results through the single output-multiple inputs framework indicate that on average, there is a low level of government efficiency towards increasing the objective of human development in Africa. However, in the long run, natural resource endowment has a positive and significant relationship with employment generation for SSA. Hence, the study established that a low level of government efficiency has a long-lasting effect on low human development experienced in Africa.

The need to improve the level of government efficiency towards economic development by making both human and physical capital more effective will spur the exploration of natural resources.

The paper provides an empirical study of the effectiveness and efficiency of government through PMG and SFA in establishing the relationship between government approaches and employment level in selected SSA countries.

This study investigates (1) whether democratization drives sovereign credit ratings (SCR) changes (the “democratic advantage”) or whether SCR changes affect democratization, (2) whether the degree of democratization in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries affects the associations and (3) whether the associations are significantly affected by resource dependence.

This study investigates the effects of SCR changes on democracy in 22 SSA countries over the period of 2000–2020 VEC Granger causality/block exogeneity Wald tests, and impulse responses and variance decomposition analyses with Cholesky ordering and Monte Carlo standard errors in a panel VECM framework.

The full sample impulse responses find that a SCR shock has a long-run detrimental effect on the democracy and political rights but only a short-run positive impact on civil liberties. Among the sub-samples, it is found that the extent of natural resource dependence does not affect the magnitude of SCR shocks on democratization mentioned above but it is found that a SCR shock affects long-run democracy in SSA countries that are relatively more democratic but is more likely to drive democratic deepening in less democratic SSA countries. The full sample variance decompositions further finds that the variance of SCR to a political rights shock outweighs the effects of all the macroeconomic factors, whereas in more diversified SSA countries, the variances of SCR are much greater for democracy and political rights shocks, which suggests that democratization and political rights in diversified SSA economies are severely affected by SCR changes. In the case of the high and low democracy sub-samples, it is found that the variance of SCR in the relatively higher democracy sub-sample is greater than in the low democracy sub-sample.

These results have three implications for democratization in SSA. First, the effect of a SCR change is not a democratically agnostic and impacts political rights to a greater extent than civil liberties. Second, SCR changes have the potential to spark a negative cycle in SSA countries whereby a downgrade leads to a deterioration in socio-political stability coupled with increased financial economic constraints that in turn drive further downgrades and macroeconomic hardship. Finally, SCR changes are potentially detrimental for democracy in more democratic SSA countries but democratically supportive in less democratic SSA countries. Thus, SSA countries that are relatively politically sophisticated are more exposed to the effects of SCR changes, whereas less politically sophisticated SSA countries can proactively shape their SCRs by undertaking political reforms.

This study is the first to examine the associations between SCR and democracy in SSA. This is critical literature for the Africa’s scholarly work given that the debate on unfair rating actions and claims of subjective rating methods is ongoing.

The purpose of the paper is to examine macroeconomic and institutional factors that influence capital flows to low-income sub-Saharan African (SSAn) countries. It analyzes capital flows in a disaggregated manner: foreign divert investment, portfolio equity and portfolio debt. There is a gap in the empirical literature in examining the factors that are important for various types of capital flows to low-income SSAn countries. Low-income SSAn countries attract very low levels of foreign investment compared to other developing economies in the SSAn region and other developing economies and this paper attempts to make a contribution in this area.

This paper examines data on capital flows and that of various push and pull factors. Trends and dynamics of capital inflows and their macroeconomic and institutional drivers are analyzed for low-income sub-Saharan African countries. Such an analysis has not been fully explored for low-income SSAn countries.

Capital inflows to low-income sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have increased sevenfold since the 1990s, dominated by foreign direct investment (FDI). They overtook official development assistance and aid in the 2010s. Mozambique and Ethiopia attract the largest size of FDI compared to other low-income SSAn economies, with natural resources as key factors in the former. The largest share of FDI to low-income SSAn countries comes from other SSAn countries, mostly South Africa and Mauritius. Among macroeconomic push factors, capital inflows are more closely related to commodity prices, while the volatility index and global liquidity are also important. Among macroeconomic pull factors, trade openness and economic growth appear more closely related to capital inflows. The surge in capital inflows in the 2000s also followed the implementation of several regional trade and investment agreements in the region. The improvement in internal conflict in the 1990s and mid-2000s seems to have helped support the increase in capital inflows during that period. This institutional quality variable appears to more closely track capital inflows compared to other institutional quality indicators. There were also improvements in the investment profile, law and order, and government stability in the 1990s to early 2000s when capital inflows picked up.

This study focuses on low-income SSAn countries, which are less studied in the empirical literature and that face immense developmental needs that require foreign and domestic capital.

Findings of this paper can shed light to policy makers on the factors that are most important to help the region attract capital inflows and areas where further improvement is needed in the macroeconomic and institutional environment.

There is a gap in the empirical literature in examining the factors that are important for attracting capital flows to low-income SSAn countries. To our knowledge, this study may be the first to explore dynamics of capital flows against institional quality for low-income SSAn countries at a disaggregated level.

This paper investigates whether democracy plays a mediating role in the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The empirical analysis is conducted using fixed effects and system GMM (Generalised Method of Moments) on a panel of 38 Sub-Saharan African countries covering the period of 1990–2018.

The results find that FDI has no direct effect on inequality whereas democracy reduces inequality directly in both the short run and the long run. The sensitivity analyses find that democracy improves equality regardless of the magnitude of FDI, resource endowment or democratic deepening whereas FDI only reduces inequality once a moderate level of democracy has been achieved.

The results discussed above thus have four policy implications. First, these results show that although democracy has inequality reducing benefits, SSA is unlikely to significantly reduce inequality unless the region purposefully diversifies its trade and FDI away from natural resources. Second, the region should continue to expand credit access to reduce inequality and attract FDI. Third, policymakers should undertake reforms that will reduce youth inequality. Lastly, the region should focus on long-run democratic reforms rather than on short-run democratization to improve governance and investor confidence.

Although there are existing studies that examine the association between FDI and inequality, FDI and democracy and democracy and inequality, this is the first study to explicitly examine the effect of democracy on the association between FDI and inequality in SSA, and the first study to separately consider the possible varied effects of contemporaneous democratization versus the long-run accumulation of democratic capital. In addition, rather than measure inequality by income alone, this study uses the more appropriate Human Development Index to account for SSA's sociological, education and income disparities.

This paper aimed examining the contribution of female labour force participation rate on economic growth in the sub-Saharan Africa during the period of 1991–2019.

The study employed a sample of 42 sub-Sahara African countries using annual data from the World Bank development indicators. The long-run causal effect of female labour force and economic growth was analysed using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model and Granger causality test for causality and direction since the variables did not have the same order of integration.

The estimated results indicate that a long-run causal relationship exists between female labour force and economic growth in sub-Sahara Africa and the direction of causality is unidirectional running from economic growth to female labour force. The results also showed that female labour force participation rate negatively and significantly contributes to economic growth (GDP) is sub-Saharan Africa in the long run with an insignificantly negative contribution in the short run hence a liability.

The author recommends the promotion of women's economic empowerment to encourage female labour force participation to increase economic growth in the entire sub-Saharan region.

This paper adds to existing literature by using more comprehensive and up to econometric analysis and variables. This paper also makes further recommendation on how female labour force participation can boost economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This paper adds to existing literature by using more comprehensive and up to econometric analysis and variables. This paper also makes further recommendation on how female labour force participation can boost economic growth in SSA.