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This paper aims to examine the impact of export diversification on business formation in Africa. The study used a panel dataset comprising 10 African countries (Algeria, Gabon, Lesotho, Morocco, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia) observed annually from 2008 to 2018. The model was estimated using an instrumental variable regression approach within a count data framework and the difference-in-difference method. Main findings of the study demonstrate that (i) export diversification facilitates the formation of new businesses in the sampled countries, (ii) the odds of a business start-up increase by 1.7 – 3.5 times in response to a percentage point increase in export diversification, and finally (iii) business start-ups are at least 95 percent higher in countries with high export diversification compared to countries with narrow export baskets. These findings emphasize the need for policies aimed at moving away from concentrated export baskets towards more diversified ones to leverage entrepreneurial effort in the selected African countries.

The study was meant to provide a comparative analysis of the association between economic complexity and the current account performance for selected Sub-Saharan Africa and the BRICS group. Economic complexity measures the sophistication of a country’s productive structure by combining information on the diversity of a country (the number of products it exports), and the ubiquity of its products (the number of countries that export that product). The objective was to investigate whether a short- and long-term relationship exists through a Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (PARDL) for 1994 – 2018. Additionally, agricultural exports were also incorporated to measure against the economic complexity Index (ECI). On the current account-ECI relationship, the PARDL estimates exposed a positive and significant impact from ECI on the current account performance in both groups in the long run, while short-run results were insignificant. On the other hand, agricultural exports were an insignificant predictor of the current account in both groups in the long run. However, only the BRICS realised a significant negative contribution in the short-run. Hence, it is essential, especially the still developing selected SSA, to improve upon its ECI to facilitate a current account improvement better. There is a need to modernise the agricultural and agro-industries in the selected SSA. The region should harness the full potential of its agricultural sector and also the overall, abundance of raw resources to advance process-led products for the export market.