Browsing by Subject "African countries"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Open Access
    Financialisation and economic growth in Africa
    (2020) Kungwane, Reabetswe; Alhassan, Abdul Latif
    Despite the growing literature on financial development-economic growth nexus, there exists a paucity of empirical studies that explore the impact of financialisation on economic growth while focusing on the competitiveness of the financial sector. This study examines the revealed comparative advantages of 34 developing African countries from the period 2008 to 2017 and goes further to determine the impact of the revealed comparative advantage indices on economic growth. Revealed comparative advantage is used as an alternative proxy to financialisation, while economic growth is measured in terms of GDP per capita. In order to determine the impact, a panel study approach was followed, using a multiple linear regression model. The study produces two findings. Firstly, we find that the majority of African countries do not reveal a comparative advantage in financial services. This finding confirms our expectation. Secondly, we find that there exists a negative and significant relationship between financialisation and economic growth. The findings suggest that as developing countries in Africa gain comparative advantages in financial services, those gains have a detrimental impact on their economic growth. Informed by the findings of this study, which have implications for financial market development in Africa, the main recommendations are firstly that regulators need to play their part in reducing the cost of business for financial services institutions—particularly compliance costs, so as to encourage competition and development in the financial services sector, without compromising their responsibility to protect consumers. Secondly, better insights regarding cross-border trading and its impact on economic growth, profitability and the accumulation of foreign currency reserves need to be gained, in order to come up with more conducive regulatory frameworks that do not result in penalties for local firms, rendering them uncompetitive relative to foreign firms. Additionally, management at financial institutions have the responsibility of ensuring that benefits derived from their cross-border business go beyond shareholder value, but that reinvestment into the real economy takes place either through increased lending or equity investments and should also ensure that sufficient investments are made into the infrastructure required to increase the institution's competitiveness. Finally, Government and regulators needs to pay attention to how cross-border financial transactions are taxed, especially considering the new era of FinTech's, cryptocurrencies, and deepening regional integration, while at the same time ensuring that there is greater depth, bread and liquidity of their local financial markets.
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    Open Access
    Have the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines influenced the development of domestic legislation for transfer pricing and the outcome of court decisions in selected African states?
    (2025) Ismail, Mohamed Waseem; West, Craig
    The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Transfer Pricing Guidelines (TPG) is a soft law instrument that acts as a guide to many multinational entities (MNE) in applying the arm's length principle (ALP). Amongst OECD member states, the OECD TPG is a relevant instrument to provide guidance to MNEs and Tax Administrations on how to apply the ALP. In transfer pricing legal disputes, international court judgments discussing the ALP touch on the influence of the OECD TPG. Every case may vary depending on the circumstances in each case and the time the ALP was enacted as part of hard law. This paper aims to answer the question, “Have the OECD TPG influenced the development of domestic legislation for transfer pricing and the outcome of court decisions in selected African states?” A sample of literature was reviewed to understand the use of the OECD TPG as a soft law instrument within the international law landscape. Thereafter, a sample of international TP case law that references the OECD TPG was inspected to understand and analyse the stance of the OECD TPG. A systematic review was conducted on a sample of international transfer pricing court judgments to determine the weighting that the OECD TPG acts as a soft law instrument in the international tax community. A sample of African TP disputes in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe was inspected to understand the status of the OECD TPG by the courts and the subsequent developments within the domestic tax legislation since the court judgment to determine whether the OECD TPG had any influence in shaping its domestic tax legislation. Through this analysis, the author attempted to understand the influential status of the OECD TPG within an African regional context despite many African countries not holding a member status with the OECD and some African countries holding observer status or act as key partners with the OECD. Where the domestic TP tax legislation lacks guidance on the application of the ALP, the OECD TPG does hold a higher status in most OECD member countries. The status of the OECD TPG varies across different jurisdictions in the sample of countries selected. It should be noted that the case law inspected is not exhaustive of the court decisions discussing the ALP for all African countries. The OECD TPG status within Africa started as a soft law instrument, but over time, it has proven to be a focal area in developing TP regulations and the domestic TP tax legislative frameworks in Africa.
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    Open Access
    The impact of mobile money on macroeconomic development: insights from Côte d'Ivoire
    (2024) Payaneeandee, Mary Catherine Sonia,; Alhassan, Abdul Latif
    Mobile money has contributed to financial inclusion across African countries. Indeed, mobile money has proven immense economic benefits to developing countries and is a driving force behind numerous economic activities. However, there are concerns that mobile money may perhaps weaken financial stability. The consequences of mobile money on these macroeconomic indicators such as: inflation, interest spread rates, money stock, private-sector credit, and economic aggregate activity are intriguing. Côte d'Ivoire is viewed as the most robust financial state within the African continent and mobile money has evolved rapidly across the country. As such, this gives room to prospect the consequences of mobile money on macroeconomic development in Côte d'Ivoire. Indeed, the core idea of this analysis is to evaluate the repercussion of mobile money on macroeconomic development in Côte d'Ivoire. The study adopted a time series approach, making use of monthly data from January 2013 till December 2021. The economic investigation adopts the structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) to analyse the data. The results showed moderate effect on the macroeconomic development variables in Côte d'Ivoire. Specifically, the shocks involving mobile money may take time to impact productivity but nonetheless support economic aggregate activity in the country. Mobile money seems to not cause inflationary pressures. In the case of money stock, mobile money leads to a shift from non-financial assets to financial assets thus influencing money supply. Furthermore, mobile money may take time to influence supply of private credit but remains an essential tool for the supply private credit. As for interest spread rates, a positive impact is noticed, and remain relatively stable. Regarding the conduct of monetary policy, mobile money has moderate impact on monetary policy transmission mechanisms, monetary effects take longer to gain full potential in Côte d'Ivoire.