This study investigates the impact of sovereign credit ratings on foreign exchange rate returns for a sample of 27 African countries over the period 2003–2018 to examine the response of the exchange rates around the time of sovereign rating announcements. The data consist of longterm foreign currency sovereign ratings, outlooks, watch lists and daily exchange rates. The study applies a combination of an event study methodology using both univariate and multivariate analyses and the Granger causality tests in a panel framework as well as impulse response tests. The results suggest that, in Africa, exchange rates do not react significantly to changes in sovereign credit rating announcements. No significant evidence of contagion was found. It is thus implied that foreign exchange rates do not react significantly to new information from credit rating agencies which shows a disjoint between macro-economic fundamental performance and financial markets. African countries are encouraged to focus on stabilising their currencies, as well as attending to macro-economic fundamentals that will result in improved credit ratings.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the most electricity-poor region in the world with an estimated 62.5 percent or just above 600 million people without access to electricity and those who have access, are connected to an unreliable system that does not meet their energy needs. The introduction of Independent Power Producers (IPPs) is perceived to be the panacea to all the sector's problems in that it will attract much-needed private investment, increase generation capacity, reduce electricity tariffs due to efficiency and competition and ultimately increase the rate of access to electricity by the general population for the region. This study examined the impact of IPPs on electricity generation growth, tariffs and access in 48 countries in Sub- Saharan Africa using panel data from 1990 to 2013. The findings suggest that over the 23-year period, only 40 percent of the sampled countries had used IPPs for power generation. In addition, results from the panel regression estimations confirmed that the use of IPPs has increased regarding electricity generation growth and electricity access in Sub-Saharan Africa and also led to a reduction in electricity tariff. The policy implication of this study is that Sub- Saharan African countries should allow for the participation of IPPs to achieve increased generation capacity, reduction of tariffs and increased access to electricity by the general population.

Abstract Despite powers and resources given to local authorities to deliver and manage their own resources, most municipalities still struggle to achieve their objectives as set out in the South African constitution. This research study sought to investigate and establish whether the infrastructure development funding by DFIs e.g. the DBSA invested in some of the under-resourced municipalities in all the provinces of the country has resulted in improved service delivery and upliftment of the socioeconomic standard of their communities and if not, what the specific reasons are. A qualitative research methodology was conducted because the objective was to get the opinions and experiences of the under resourced municipalities throughout all the nine provinces of South Africa. The results of the study indicated that municipalities are very aware of the role of DFIs and all the municipalities that participated in the study stated that they had received development loans from the DBSA. The results of this study also revealed that all the respondents indicated that development finance they received made a significant difference in improving infrastructure developments in their municipalities. It has advanced and uplifted the socio economic statuses of the communities and improved service delivery and quelling the frequency and severity of service delivery protests. Poor governance was a serious impediment in municipalities where lack of accountability, lack of leadership, tensions between political and administrative interface; poor ability of many councillors to deal with the demands of local government; lack of clear separation of roles between the legislative and executive; inadequate accountability measures and support systems and resources for local democracy and poor compliance with the legislative and regulatory frameworks for municipalities and fraud and corruption are among the key governance challenges faced by municipalities

Among other challenges, it can be argued that poverty remains the greatest challenge facing the developing countries, particularly for Sub-Saharan countries. A significant proportion of people in the developing world are severely affected by poverty. In 2013 it was estimated that 787 million of the world population lived in severe poverty (World Bank, 2016). Moreover, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for half of the population who are severely affected by poverty. Using Namibia as a case study and data sets from 1991 to 2017, this research investigates how financial development impacts on poverty reduction in the country. The study employed the Johansen Cointegration Procedure and Vector Error Correction Model to test the data. The data was obtained from the World Development Indicators and the Namibia Central Bank. The main findings suggest that financial development is important for poverty reduction in the Namibian context, and has a positive and significant effect on poverty reduction. Further, there was a unidirectional causality between financial development and poverty. The Johansen cointegration results reported three cointegration equations amongst the variables, confirming a long-run cointegration relationship between financial sector development and poverty reduction. Interestingly, the per capita GDP is negatively associated with the poverty measure. The study recommends the government to focus on policies that stimulate credit to the private sector. In terms of trade openness, policies should aim at improving and strengthening fair bilateral and multilateral trade, as well as promoting regional trade in order to grow trade volumes.

Domestic debt has over recent years increasingly grown to be a significant portion of the financing budget for the government of Malawi. As such, this study investigated the impact that domestic debt has on economic growth in Malawi. The research employed classical time series estimations techniques covering unit root and cointegration analysis based on annual data from 1984 to 2015 to examine the long-run and short-run relationship between domestic debt and economic growth in Malawi. The findings of the study show that in the long-run domestic debt has a positive impact on economic growth in Malawi, while a negative long-run relationship was established between inflation and economic growth. High inflation was found to stifle economic growth. In addition, the study established that government consumption expenditure and population growth also have a negative impact on economic growth. The study therefore recommends that the government needs to use domestic debt in moderation for as long as it positively impacts economic growth and that an effective monetary policy exists that reins in inflation. Furthermore, the study recommends that government needs to control government expenditure and take acceptable steps that will manage population growth.

The research explored the long-term relationship between FDI, GDP and host country employment by using sector-wise panel data from 1991 to 2017 in Namibia. The study applied unit root testing and Cointegration test to test for the presence of a cointegration relationship between the variables. Also, a vector autoregression model short-run causality among the variables was examined. In the end, Impulse response functions are estimated. The research found both a short term and long-term causality going from FDI inflow to employment. Impulse responses show that both GDP and employment respond positively to an exogenous shock in FDI inflow. However, the employment response to FDI inflow shock is smaller than that of GDP response. The paper also concludes that FDI has no causal effects on economic growth in Namibia. It means that economic growth is not contributed by the FDI significantly the results in this research have some significant policy implications. Therefore, as the results suggest that the FDI inflow has a positive impact on employment, because of the results, the researcher also recommends that Namibia pursue the policy of attracting foreign firms aggressively and create all the conditions required for attracting foreign direct investment in order to create further employment opportunities.

Access to finance is an essential factor in the agricultural value chain and enables participants to purchase essential inputs and infrastructure (e.g. machinery and land) necessary for the production process, grading, processing, packaging and distribution of their produce. Finance is also required where there are specific regulatory requirements (such as licencing and certification) to which a participant must adhere, and these may differ from commodity to commodity. With this in mind, it is clear that any farming enterprise that wishes to enter and participate in the agricultural sector will need access to finance to compete effectively. The study examines the financial needs and challenges faced by contract farmers in achieving transformation in the agricultural sector in South Africa. In line with the number of interviews conducted in other qualitative studies, a sample of eight contract farmers from Gauteng, North West, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State provinces of South Africa were chosen for the interviews. The study finds that purchase of land, farming infrastructure, farming equipment, working capital for agricultural inputs, and funds for environmental impact assessments are the prevalent financial needs of the sampled contract farmers. Most importantly, the study further documents evidence that business and financial understanding, lack of capital, insufficient collateral, the lending criteria and policies of financial institutions and rigid and non-inclusive products are the major challenges faced by black contract farmers in raising funds to meet their financial needs and their contractual obligations to their sponsors. The study recommends ways in which the farmers believe they could be part of the solution in financially assisting new and emerging farmers and creating a transformed agricultural sector in the country. Farmers believe that this requires a concerted effort by all the stakeholders to close the existing gaps in the current financial mechanisms used to finance farmers in South Africa. It is important that the critical stakeholders (government, development financial institutions and other financial institutions, farmers and their organisations, sponsors and agroprocessors) work closely together so that more can be achieved in the least possible time period. The role of each of the above stakeholders is discussed in the recommendations chapter.

This study seeks to examine the relationship between mobile money and financial inclusion in Lesotho in order to assess the viability of mobile money as a tool for advancing Lesotho's financial inclusion agenda. The study uses a number of deposit bank accounts as a proxy for financial inclusion (FI) and a dependent variable in three vector autoregression (VAR) bivariate models. Each of the three mobile money variables; number of mobile money registered accounts (MMC), number of agents (MMA) and volumes of mobile money transactions (MMT) are regressed against financial inclusion to investigate the relationship with each. The results indicate that among the three proxies of mobile money, only two have a relationship with financial inclusion: MMC and MMT. MMA does not show any relationship with financial inclusion. The relationship between FI and MMT is one-way from FI to MMT, which is not important for the purpose of this study. The MMC relationship with FI is the opposite of that of MMT and FI. There is a positive causal relationship from MMC to FI, indicating the positive influence of mobile money accounts of financial inclusion. The paper recommends that the government of Lesotho creates an enabling regulatory environment that supports the adoption and growth of mobile money in order to improve financial inclusion.

With the worldwide focus on financial inclusion to decrease poverty levels by banking the unbanked, understanding how to facilitate the banking of the previously unbanked in developing countries has become a globally topical issue. To contribute to this discussion from the perspective of Africa, the following paper endeavours to compute financial inclusion indices (FII) for 36 African countries. The paper leverages a model developed by Cámara and Tuesta (2014), using a two-stage Principal Component Analysis with definitions for financial inclusion variables from Sarma (2008). Upon computing the indices, we then endeavour to study the relationship between financial technology (fintech) and financial inclusion by running a regression analysis between fintech variables and the financial inclusion indices. As expected, we find that the highest financial inclusion levels are in the Southern and East African regions, with the lowest in Central Africa. The introduction of mobile money has had a significant impact on financial inclusion levels, particularly in East Africa. Our analysis also finds that the usage variable is critical in understanding the depth of financial inclusion. While this is so, there is still a great need for improvements across financial access, usage and availability in Africa. The regression analysis confirms this assessment, showing that overall, the use of mobile accounts has a positive and significant relationship with financial inclusion. At the same time, the use of digital payments for existing accounts also improves financial inclusion but to a lesser extent. The distinction between the impact of mobile banking and digital payments is an important one given that ownership of mobile banking increases the number of people with access to financial services while using digital payments merely deepens and enhances the usage of existing account holders. Macroeconomic factors of economic growth and banking sector development also are significant for financial inclusion, though to a lesser degree. This paper recommends the study of what impacts the sub-indices both positively and negatively, and how countries can maximise each sub-index, as it is an important focus area for policymakers who are looking to improve financial inclusion levels for their respective countries. We further recommend the development of a unified taxonomy on financial inclusion and its measurements. The role of policymakers would be to propel forward the formulation of this taxonomy, working with all the relevant stakeholders.

The United Nations estimated that to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals globally, they require approximately USD6 trillion per annum, totalling between USD90 to a USD100 trillion of investments needed over the 15 years. African countries are struggling to finance their infrastructure development needs and require innovative solutions to finance their infrastructure gaps. The African Development Bank noted that Africa's infrastructure needs can be estimated between USD130 and USD170 billion per annum with an estimated financing gap of USD68 billion to USD108 billion. Blended finance received international attention during the Third International Conference on Finance for Development in 2015 when it was mentioned in the adopted resolution report dubbed the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (here forth the Addis Agenda). The overall objective of this study is to explore the private sector participation investing in economic infrastructure in Africa and the public sector's understanding of blended finance. The research also focuses on the role of multi-and bilateral development banks in mobilising the private sector and the government support required to attract private sector participation investing in infrastructure projects For this study, the Convergent Parallel Design mixed research method is employed where both the quantitative and qualitative data are collected concurrently or in the same phase. The World Bank PPI database is used as the primary quantitative data source, while nine qualitative indepth interviews were conducted. The results from the multiple linear regression model indicate that projects with multi-lateral development bank' support are characterised by lower private sector participation in infrastructure investments in Africa. Furthermore, countries receiving concessional support from the International Development Association (IDA) are receiving lower private sector participation in their projects. In-depth interviews with public sector officials indicated that most of the officials had an overall understanding of blended finance in line with current market definitions. Officials, however, were not convinced with the use of concessional funding and loans in the blended finance structure due to the conditions precedents which came with it but felt like they had no choice but to accept these conditions due to the needs of the countries and the project involved. Informed by the findings of the study, the study recommends that blended finance should be localised for the African context and makes key policy recommendations linked to the OECD principles for blended finance.