During the past three years the frontier markets of sub-Saharan Africa have received growing amounts of portfolio capital flows, with heightened interest from foreign investors. Compared with foreign direct investment, portfolio capital flows tend to be more volatile, and thus pose challenges for sub-Saharan African frontier markets. This study examines the evolution of capital flows since 2010 and discusses the policies these countries have designed to reduce risks from the inherent volatility of these flows.
Contemporary Issues in Development Finance provides comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of theoretical and policy issues in development finance from both the domestic and the external finance perspectives and emphasizes addressing the gaps in financial markets. The chapters cover topical issues such as microfinance, private sector financing, aid, FDI, remittances, sovereign wealth, trade finance, and the sectoral financing of agricultural and infrastructural projects. Readers will acquire both breadth and depth of knowledge in critical and contemporary issues in development finance from a philosophical and yet pragmatic development impact approach. The text ensures this by carefully integrating the relevant theoretical underpinnings, empirical assessments, and practical policy issues into its analysis. The work is designed to be fully accessible to practitioners with only a limited theoretical economic background, allowing them to deeply engage with the book as useful reference material. Readers may find more advanced information and technical details provided in clear, concise boxes throughout the text. Finally, each chapter is fully supported by a set of review questions and by cases and examples from developing countries, particularly those in Africa. This book is a valuable resource for both development finance researchers and students taking courses in development finance, development economics, international finance, financial development policy, and economic policy management. Practitioners will find the development impact, policy, and conceptual analysis dimensions insightful analysing and designing intervention strategies.
This book analyzes the process of international financial integration and the structural forces driving private capital to developing countries. Against this background, it details the potential benefits of integration and the implications of fast-moving global capital flows for emerging economics. Examining the experience of countries that have attracted substantial private capital flows, the book provides invaluable guidance as to what works and what doesn't during the transition to financial integration. It will be of compelling interest to policymakers and also to international investors and bankers, financial analysts, and researchers.
This paper assesses empirically the key drivers of private capital flows to a large sample of emerging market economies in the last decade. It analyzes the effect of the global financial cycle, measured by the VIX, on capital flows and investigates the role of fundamentals and country characteristics in mitigating or amplifying its effect. Using interaction models, we find the effect of the VIX to be non-linear. For low levels of the VIX, capital flows are driven by fundamental factors. During periods of stress, the VIX becomes the dominant driver of capital flows while other determinants, with the exception of interest rate differentials, lose statistical significance. Our results also suggest that the effect of global financial conditions on gross private capital flows increases with the host country’s level of financial sector development. Finally, our results imply that countries cannot fully insulate themselves from global financial shocks, unless creating a fragmented global financial system.
The Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated the tension between large development needs in infrastructure and scarce public resources. To alleviate this tension and promote a strong and job-rich recovery from the crisis, Africa needs to mobilize more financing from and to the private sector.
On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa investigates the dynamics of capital flight from Angola, Côte d'Ivoire, and South Africa, countries that have witnessed large-scale illicit financial outflows in recent decades. Quantitative, qualitative, and institutional analysis for each country is used to examine the modus operandi of capital flight; that is, the 'who', 'how', and 'where' dimensions of the phenomenon. 'Who' refers to major domestic and foreign players; 'how' refers to mechanisms of capital acquisition, transfer, and concealment; and 'where' refers to the destinations of capital flight and the transactions involved. The evidence reveals a complex network of actors and enablers involved in orchestrating and facilitating capital flight and the accumulation of private wealth in offshore secrecy jurisdictions. This underscores the reality that capital flight is a global phenomenon, and that measures to curtail it are a shared responsibility for Africa and the global community. Addressing the problem of capital flight and related issues such as trade misinvoicing, money laundering, tax evasion, and theft of public assets by political and economic elites will require national and global efforts with a high level of coordination.
A comprehensive thematic analysis of capital flight from Africa, it covers the role of safe havens, offshore financial centres, and banking secrecy in facilitating illicit financial flows and provides rich insights to policy makers interested in designing strategies to address the problems of capital flight and illicit financial flows.
The paper investigates empirically the determinants of economic growth for a large sample of sub-Saharan African countries during 1981-92. The results indicate that (i) an increase in private investment has a relatively large positive impact on per capita growth; (ii) growth is stimulated by public policies that lower the budget deficit in relation to GDP (without reducing government investment), reduce the rate of inflation, maintain external competitiveness, promote structural reforms, encourage human capital development, and slow population growth; and (iii) convergence of per capita income occurs after controlling for human capital development and public policies.
For a long time, economic research on Africa was not seen as a profitable venture intellectually or professionally-few researchers in top-ranked institutions around the world chose to become experts in the field. This was understandable: the reputation of Africa-centered economic research was not enhanced by the well-known limitations of economic data across the continent. Moreover, development economics itself was not always fashionable, and the broader discipline of economics has had its ups and downs, and has been undergoing a major identity crisis because it failed to predict the Great Recession. Times have changed: many leading researchers-including a few Nobel laureates-have taken the subject of Africa and economics seriously enough to devote their expertise and creativity to it. They have been amply rewarded: the richness, complexities, and subtleties of African societies, civilizations, rationalities, and ways of living, have helped renew the humanities and the social sciences-and economics in particular-to the point that the continent has become the next major intellectual frontier to researchers from around the world. In collecting some of the most authoritative statements about the science of economics and its concepts in the African context, this lhandbook (the first of two volumes) opens up the diverse acuity of commentary on exciting topics, and in the process challenges and stimulates the quest for knowledge. Wide-ranging in its scope, themes, language, and approaches, this volume explores, examines, and assesses economic thinking on Africa, and Africa's contribution to the discipline. The editors bring a set of powerful resources to this endeavor, most notably a team of internationally-renowned economists whose diverse viewpoints are complemented by the perspectives of philosophers, political scientists, and anthropologists.
This book brings together academics in the fields of economics, political science, and law, with business practitioners in the fields of risk assessment and portfolio management. Their contributions are sequenced to tell a story. Africa is perceived as being a highly risky continent. As a result, investment is discouraged. These risks are partly exaggerated. However, to the extent that they reflect genuine problems, they are capable of being mitigated by insurance and reduced by political restraints such as central banks, investment charters, and international agreements.
