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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.

This work aims to identify the existing relationship between aid-for-trade flows and export diversification in sub-Saharan Africa and to develop Asia countries. The results of the estimate, conducted by the Generalized Moments Method (GMM) over the period 1995-2019, show a positive impact of Aid for Trade on horizontal and vertical diversification of exports for the entire sample, including positive and significant effects on per capita GDP growth, gross capital formation, commercial freedom, human capital, and population growth. In the sub-Saharan African sub-sample, Aid for Trade positively impacts vertical and horizontal diversification and the other variables, such as GDP by habitat, FDI, gross capital formation, and human capital; on the other hand, in the sub-sample of Asian countries, aid has a negative impact on horizontal and vertical diversification; moreover, GDP, FDI, gross capital formation, human capital, population growth, and inflation have a positive influence. Our study compared to previous studies mainly dealt with the “impact of aid on export diversification” aggregated forms, but this study fills the gaps in the literature by examining the impact of trade aid on diversification. from its vertical and horizontal dimensions and contribute to the improvement of knowledge in this field.  

The main objective of this work is to identify the explanatory factors determining the diversification of exports in SADC countries during the period 1990-2018. We regress the indicator of export diversification, measured successively by the Herfindahl-Hirschman index on a set of explanatory variables. Using a next-generation panel data approach is applied, such as panel unit root, panel cointegration, fully modified OLS (FMOLS), and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS). The result of unit root tests for all these variables are stationary at their first difference and integrated of order one.  Our results show that there is a long-term relationship between export diversification and GDP, openness to trade, accumulation of human and physical capital, foreign direct investment. All of its variables are the main explanatory factors for the diversification of exports in SADC countries.

The term high-tech, covering the high-tech industry and the information-intensive service sector, is based on advanced scientific and technological expertise that requires science, technology, and innovation (STI), and is based on Research & Development expenditure. Sectoral, product and patent approaches are used for classification by OECD and European Union. Literature review on high-tech show that countries focusing on Research and Development Expenditures and new patents have succeeded in increasing their high-tech exports as well. Turkey is one of the countries where the levels of high-tech export is not at the desired levels yet therefore the government must give incentives for Research and Development expenditures and new patents for innovation, as high-tech export affects GDP growth positively.