African Journal of Economic Review

Impact of Institutional Quality on Inclusive Growth in Nigeria

2025-05-30T09:59:10+00:00

Inclusive growth remains a critical challenge in Nigeria, as the nation grapples with persistent poverty, inequality, and unemployment despite periods of economic expansion. Understanding the role of institutional quality in fostering inclusive growth is essential, given its potential to address these systemic issues. This study empirically examines the relationship between institutional quality and inclusive growth in Nigeria from 1984 to 2020 using the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) estimator. The findings reveal that in the short run, institutional quality negatively and significantly affects income growth and inclusive growth, although it positively influences employment. In contrast, the long-run analysis indicates that institutional quality positively contributes to income growth, income equality, and inclusive growth at a 5% significance level, while its effect on employment remains statistically insignificant. Thus, institutional quality negatively impacts inclusive growth in the short run but positively influenced growth inclusiveness in the long run. The study underscores the need for policy reforms aimed at improving public service quality and institutional effectiveness to enhance the inclusiveness of growth in Nigeria over time.

The Role of Industrialization and Renewable Energy on Environmental Quality in Oil Exporting Sub-Saharan African Countries

2025-05-30T10:02:54+00:00

As countries grow, the call for achieving industrial sustainability becomes crucial for their development. As a result, this paper investigates the role of industrialization and renewable energy on environmental quality (proxied as load capacity factor) across seven (7) oil-exporting SSA countries between 1990 and 2023. Using cross-sectional dependence induced techniques such as panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) and feasible generalized least squares (FGLS), this study finds that while a unit increase in industrialization exacerbates environmental quality by 0.47 units, a unit increase in renewable energy plays an important role in improving environmental quality by 0.06 units. However, the amount of renewable energy consumption does not have the full potential to reduce the adverse environmental effects of industrialization. Further, the result indicates that while population reduces ecological quality, economic growth improves it. The study recommends that policymakers in oil-exporting countries should tailor their policies towards environmental regulation and encourage the use of eco-friendly technologies in the manufacturing sectors, through tax incentive policies, green industrial zones, and benchmarking ecological performance across these countries.

Aggregate Ores and Metals Trade Mis-invoicing and Industrial Development in Zambia

2025-05-30T10:09:24+00:00

The industrial sector development is crucial for achieving sustainable development. In Zambia, efforts to promote industrial development can be traced as far back as the 1960s. However, the increasing volume of illicit financial flow evidenced in trade mis-invoicing deprives the country of the needed resources to spur industrial development. This study, therefore, contributes to the literature by analyzing the effect of all ores and metals trade mis-invoicing on industrial development in Zambia. The study employed the vector error correction model (VECM) and Johansen cointegration test on unit root and cointegrated time series from 1992 to 2023. The study findings show that trade mis-invoicing in aggregate ores and metals has a disastrous long-term effect on industrial development in Zambia. Therefore, policymakers and implementors should curb trade mis-invoicing among mining companies, improve the regulatory quality and ensure a stable exchange rate to foster industrial development.

Stock Market Returns Volatility and Its Effect on the Growth of the Listed Companies in Kenya

2025-05-30T10:19:29+00:00

In this paper, we analyze the effect of stock returns volatility on the growth of listed companies in Kenya under the Nairobi Securities Exchange 20 share index. We specified a dynamic panel data model used to capture this relationship. Using a panel of 228 observations from 19 listed companies over a period of 12 years from 2011 to 2022, we estimated both the difference and the system GMM. The findings show that stock returns volatility has a robust adverse effect on the growth rate of listed companies in Kenya. Further, the estimated model results support the theory that the growth of firms depends on their liquidity and retention ratios. These findings are critical to policymakers, investors, and companies as they strategize their effective portfolio allocations and interventions in the presence of a volatile market, as well as adding literature to the broader academic discourse.

Value / Time: An Essay on the Principles of Political Economy

2025-06-02T12:46:21+00:00

This study offers a critical reflection on the concept of value as it has taken shape in political economy, resuming the debate from where both classical political economy and Marxism had left it. It does not merely recall the old categories but proposes a reconstruction of the very measure of value by introducing the element of time into its determination—an element long neglected since the writings of the nineteenth century. From this perspective, the study reconsiders the dialectical relationship between humans and machines, not as a simplistic opposition between labor and technology, but as a deeper understanding of how value is formed within a civilization that continuously reproduces the conditions of its own existence. Technological progress does not lead to the erasure of value but rather to a reshaping of the conditions of its production and distribution in accordance with prevailing forms of social domination. The machine does not eliminate labor; it reorganizes it and generates through it new forms of labor in different economic spaces. Technology, while reducing the individual value of goods and labor, does not do so as a manifestation of social progress, but rather as the outcome of a social struggle between productive forces and forces of domination. In response to Western theses that herald the end of labor and the disappearance of value under the banner of the "technological revolution," this study adopts a critical stance that reasserts the centrality of labor. It emphasizes that value—as a historical social relation—does not vanish but rather transforms in its modes of appearance. It also demonstrates that capitalism, in the face of these transformations, does not collapse but instead reproduces itself through mechanisms of adaptation to what appears to be its own negation. This text does not merely trace the impact of technology on political economy; it proposes an alternative theoretical path for understanding value—one that places time at the heart of the analysis, affirming the underlying dialectic between labor and technique, between society and machine, and between value and time.