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The need for gender inclusion was highlighted as the fifth sustainable development goal (SDG) (i.e. SDG5) and policies have been gearing towards attaining this objective and its subsequent effect on macroeconomic outcomes. Equally, the demonstrated trend of infrastructures in Africa in terms of stocks and future need is unique compared to the rest of the world. The objective of this study is therefore to empirically examine the effect of women's political inclusion on infrastructural development in Africa. The results through the system GMM and Quantile Regression techniques show that women's political inclusion enhances infrastructural development in Africa. The result is robust across different measures of infrastructures and political inclusion. Besides, the positive relationship is maintained across income groups, levels of political stability and export structure. However, the effect is not significant in countries with infrastructural scores around the extreme quantiles. The results of the study recommend African policy makers to prioritise the inclusion of women in the political agenda as one of the strategies towards the development of infrastructures. This could come through the putting in place of laws that favour women's participation in politics. Moreover, the countries should ratify international conventions that favour gender inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the knowledge economy (KE) performance of lagging African countries vis-à-vis their frontier counterparts with regard to the four dimensions of the World Bank's knowledge economy index (KEI). The empirical exercise is for the period 1996–2010. It consists of first establishing leading nations before suggesting policy initiatives that can be implemented by sampled countries depending on identified gaps that are provided with the sigma convergence estimation approach. The following findings are established as frontier knowledge economy countries: (i) for the most part, North African countries are dominant in education. Tunisia is overwhelmingly dominant in 11 of the 15 years, followed by Libya which is a frontier country in 2 years of the periodicity while Cape Verde and Egypt lead in a single year each of the periodicity; (ii) with the exception of Morocco that is leading in the year 2009, Seychelles is overwhelmingly dominant in ICT; (iii) South Africa also indomitably leads in terms of innovation; and (iv) while Botswana and Mauritius share dominance in institutional regime, economic incentives in terms of private domestic credit are most apparent in Angola (8 years of the periodicity), the Democratic Republic of Congo (3 years of the periodicity) and Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Malawi (each leading in 1 year of the periodicity). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the role of globalization-fueled regionalization policies on the financial allocation efficiency of four economic and monetary regions in Africa from 1980 to 2008. Banking and financial system efficiency proxies are used as dependent variables and seven bundled and unbundled globalization variables are employed as independent indicators. The bundling is achieved by principal component analysis, while the empirical evidence is based on interactive fixed effects regressions. The findings are as follows. First, financial allocation efficiency is more sensitive to financial openness compared to trade openness and most sensitive to globalization. The relationship between allocation efficiency and globalization-fueled regionalization policies is defined by: (i) a Kuznets or inverted U-shaped curve in the UEMOA and CEMAC zones (evidence of decreasing returns for allocation efficiency from globalization-fueled regionalization) and (ii) a U-shaped relationship overwhelmingly in the COMESA and scantily in the EAC (increasing returns to allocation efficiency due to globalization-fueled regionalization). These relationships are relevant to the specific globalization dynamics within regions. Economic and monetary regions are more prone to surplus liquidity than pure economic regions are. Policy implications and measures for reducing surplus liquidity are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effect of foreign aid on education and lifelong learning in 53 African countries for the period 1996–2010. Three main issues are assessed, notably: (i) the effect of aid on education; (ii) the incremental impact of aid on education and (iii) the effect of aid on lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is measured as the combined knowledge acquired during the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. Foreign aid dynamics include total aid, aid from multilateral donors (MD) and aid from the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries. The empirical evidence is based on an endogeneity-robust generalized method of moments. The following findings are established. First, the aid variables have positive effects on primary school enrolment and lifelong learning, with the exception of aid from MD which positively affects only lifelong learning. Second, the positive effect on primary school enrolment consistently has a higher magnitude compared to the corresponding impact on lifelong learning. Third, the effects of aid dynamics on secondary and tertiary school enrolments are not significant. We also contribute to the literature by proposing an indicator of lifelong learning for developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]