Explore publications.

This study examines whether movement out of agriculture accelerates productivity convergence in West Africa. We assemble an annual country panel for 16 West African economies over 2000–2023 from the World Development Indicators, Penn World Table 11.0 and Worldwide Governance Indicators. The estimable dynamic specification contains 237 country-year observations for 11 economies because the Penn World Table human-capital series determines the common complete-case sample. A pre-specified two-step System GMM model is rejected because second-order serial correlation is significant and the Hansen test is uninformative. Inference therefore rests on a dynamic country-and-year fixed-effects model with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, supplemented by a first-order Nickell-bias assessment and a three-sector shift-share decomposition. Labour productivity is conditionally convergent: the lag coefficient is 0.841, implying a four-year half-life, or about 9.7 years under the conservative bias approximation. Capital deepening is positive and statistically precise, while manufacturing, services and agricultural-employment shares are not separately significant. This absence of statistical precision does not imply that structural transformation is irrelevant: employment reallocation contributes positively in all 16 economies. Regionally, within-sector gains account for 75.2% of observed productivity change, reallocation for 29.3%, and the interaction term for −4.5%. Policy should combine labour mobility with capital formation and productivity upgrading inside agriculture, manufacturing and services rather than pursue sector-share targets alone.

Over the years, productivity performance has been the subject that generated enormous interest amongst economic scholars.  This shows the value of productivity on business growth.  Hence, the implementation of improved interventions for productivity improvement requires appropriate innovative practices for industries.  This sentiment supports the importance of innovation for productivity improvement.   Consequently, this study assesses the influence of innovation on labour productivity in an automotive assembly organisation in South Africa.  It has been established that the manufacturing industry in South Africa has low labour productivity compared with its BRICS counterpart countries like Russia, India and China.  As a result, this study centres its attention on innovation, considering low levels of labour productivity in the manufacturing sector of South Africa. It was quantitative in design and the investigation was achieved by collecting pre-and post-innovative quarterly data for spoilage and the achievement of production targets.  The study analysed the production and related experiences of an automotive assembly organisation, operating in KwaZulu-Natal in the eThekwini Municipality that had adopted an innovative seat-handling manipulator in its assembly process.  The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model, using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), was used to analyse data.  The study indicates that spoilage rate and the achievement of production targets have the relationship with labour productivity after an innovative seat handling manipulator was implemented in the organisation.

This research work examines the impacts of foreign aids and human capital on economic growth of African oil and non-oil producing countries. Adopting the time series data from 2000 to 2021, the study employs Westerlund Error Correction Based panel cointegration test to investigate the impacts of Physical Capital (FA, GCF, FDI), Human Capital (EDU, HLT) and Policy Variables (REV, EXR) on Gross Domestic Product growth rate (GDPgr). Findings from results of the study affirms that there is a long-term co-movement between the GDPgr and the explanatory variables (FA, GCF, FDI, EDU, HLT, REV, EXR) of both African oil and non-oil producing countries. The study also reveals that foreign aids are better effectively put into use in the African non-oil producing countries than in the oil producing countries. Findings in the study equally confirm that financial resources in the African non-oil producing countries are better efficiently spent on human capital and domestic investment than in the African oil producing countries. The study further shows that revenue generation and foreign exchange earnings stimulate growth better in the African oil producing countries than the non-oil countries counterparts in Africa.  

This paper x-rayed the concept, measurement and, patterns of economic development. In doing this, the paper reviewed a vast literature on concepts, measurement of economic development and, economic development patterns and their effects on growth indicators as well as on the quality of life components. This literature was sourced from known academic databases. From the overview of the concept, measurement of economic development and, economic development patterns and their relationship between growth indicators as well as the quality of life components the following were found; as new challenges emerge, the horizon of the concept of economic development expands to accommodate the prevailing challenges. Economic development has no conventional measure/indicator that completely captures it process and, there are various economic development patterns use in tackling the problem of economic growth and quality of life, some of which are; knowledge-based, trade-based, saving-based and ethnic-religious-based pattern. Future studies may use these concepts/measurements of economic development and patterns of economic development and, validate their significance using statistical methods.