Browsing by Subject "sub-Sahara"

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    Efficiency, returns to scale, and technology gaps in the short-term insurance industry in sub-Saharan Africa
    (2026) Thato, Kontle; Alhassan, Abdul Latif
    As part of the insurance industry, the short-term insurance segment is an integral part of the financial services sector. Through this segment, individuals, businesses, and governments can hedge against various types of risks, including manmade and natural catastrophes. Hence, the productive performance of this industry is essential. This study examines the efficiency, returns to scale and technological gaps in the short-term insurance industry in six selected sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2011-2017. The study employs a bootstrapped metafrontier data envelopment analysis approach to measure efficiencies and the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney statistic to explore performance differences across countries. The results show lower levels of metafrontier technical and managerial efficiencies across all countries. A comparison of firms in different countries reveals that South African firms have higher technical efficiency scores and smaller technological gaps than firms from other countries. The low average metafrontier efficiencies across firms indicate the need to adopt state-of-the-art technology, especially outside South Africa. Besides, firms in most countries appear to operate with increasing returns to scale. The evidence also suggests that firm size, foreign ownership, group affiliation, and reinsurance are the drivers of efficiency and technology gaps in sample markets while firm size, leverage, domestic ownership, and reinsurance are the factors that influence insurers' probability of operating with constant returns to scale. group affiliation is an important determinant of short-term insurer performance. One of the implications of this thesis is that governments should promote technological adoption through incentives and support scaling operations via regulatory easing and financial incentives. Additionally, attracting foreign investment, reassessing reinsurance practices, and investing in capacity building and training are essential for improving efficiency and closing technology gaps.