Foreign aid, instability and governance in Africa

This study contributes to the attendant literature by bundling governance dynamics and focusing on foreign aid instability instead of foreign aid. We assess the role of foreign aid instability on governance dynamics in fifty three African countries for the period 1996-2010. An autoregressive endogeneity-robust Generalized Method of Moments is employed. Instabilities are measured in terms of variance of the errors and standard deviations. Three main aid indicators are used, namely: total aid, aid from multilateral donors and bilateral aid. Principal Component Analysis is used to bundle governance indicators, namely: political governance (voice & accountability and political stability/no violence), economic governance (regulation quality and government effectiveness), institutional governance (rule of law and corruption-control) and general governance (political, economic and institutional governance). Our findings show that foreign aid instability increases governance standards, especially political and general governance. Policy implications are discussed

Basic Formal Education Quality, Information Technology and Inclusive Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study assesses the relevance of basic formal education in information technology for inclusive human development in 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2000-2012. The question it aims to answer is the following: what is the relevance of basic formal education in the effect of mobile phone penetration on inclusive human development in sub-Saharan Africa when initial levels of inclusive human development are taken into account? The empirical evidence is based on instrumental quantile regressions. Poor primary education dampens the positive effect of mobile phone penetration on inclusive human development. This main finding should be understood in the perspective that, the education quality indicator represents a policy syndrome because of the way it is computed, notably: the ratio of pupils to teachers. Hence, an increasing ratio indicates decreasing quality of education. It follows that decreasing quality of education dampens the positive effect of mobile phone on inclusive development. This tendency is consistent throughout the conditional distribution of inclusive human development. Policy implications for sustainable development are discussed

The Comparative Economics of ICT, Environmental Degradation and Inclusive Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study examines how information and communication technology (ICT) could be employed to dampen the potentially damaging effects of environmental degradation in order to promote inclusive human development in a panel of 44 Sub-Saharan African countries. ICT is captured with internet and mobile phone penetration rates whereas environmental degradation is measured in terms of CO2 emissions per capita and CO2 intensity. The empirical evidence is based on Fixed Effects and Tobit regressions using data from 2000-2012. In order to increase the policy relevance of this study, the dataset is decomposed into fundamental characteristics of inclusive development and environmental degradation based on income levels (Low income versus (vs.) Middle income); legal origins (English Common law vs. French Civil law); religious domination (Christianity vs. Islam); openness to sea (Landlocked vs. Coastal); resource-wealth (Oil-rich vs. Oil-poor) and political stability (Stable vs. Unstable).Baseline findings broadly show that improvement in both of measures of ICT would significantly diminish the possibly harmful effect of CO2 emissions on inclusive human development. When the analysis is extended with the abovementioned fundamental characteristics, we observe that the moderating influence of both our ICT variables on CO2 emissions is higher in the group of English Common law, Middle income and Oil-wealthy countries than in the French Civil law, Low income countries and Oil-poor countries respectively. Theoretical and practical policy implications are discussed

Data for: Natural Resource Rents, Political Regime and Terrorism in Africa

The file contains the dataset used for the empirical analysis of the study titled "Natural Resource Rents, Political Regimes and Terrorism in Africa". The dataset includes domter - Number of domestic terrorism incidents; transter - Number of transnational terrorism incidents; Unter - Number of terrorism incidents whose category is unclear; totter - Total number of terrorism incidents; demo - Dummy variables for democracies scoring a 6 and higher on polity; autoc - Dummy variables for autocracies scoring a -6 or lower on polity; anocy - Dummy variables for anocracies scoring between 5 and -5 on polity; totnat - It is given by the sum of oil rents, natural gas rents, coal rents, mineral rents, forest rents; gdppc - Gross domestic product divided by midyear population. Data are in constant U.S. dollars; pop - Total population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship except for refugees not permanently settled in the country of asylum; ethnic - Ethnic diversity is computed as one minus the Herfindahl index of ethnolinguistic group shares, and reflects the probability that two randomly selected individuals from a population belong to different groups; trade - Export plus import of commodities (% of GDP); conflict - The index of the risk of internal conflict; surface - Total surface area in millions of square miles

Inflation, inflation volatility and terrorism in Africa

The dataset is employed to provide an answer to this question: can inflation or inflation volatility incites terrorism? This question is salient as there is a latent belief that both can actually produce hardships for people, making them to be economically deprived and aggrieved, thereby reducing their opportunity costs of rebellion against the incumbent government. This study answers the above raised question using a negative binomial regression on 38 African economies over the period 1980-2012, in which the following findings are established. Inflation volatility and not inflation per se constitutes a significant predictor of terrorism, particularly, for the domestic terrorist activity over the period of coverage. The prevailing impacts of other confounding variables such as surface areas, ethnicity, physical integrity rights, as well as the lagged value of terrorism are consistently notable across the model specifications. Thus, the paper argues that the non-statistical significance of inflation does not render it less important as it provides an enabling environment for which inflation volatility thrives

Do political regimes condition the impact of inequality on terrorism in Africa?

The datasets are collected from different international organization webpage to provide answer to the research aim i.e. do political regimes condition the impact of inequality on terrorism in Africa? This findings shows that political regimes exert no discernable first-order impact on terrorism except for the negative impact of anocratic regime on transnational terrorism. There exists a significant negative unconditional impact of income inequality on transnational terrorism but scarcely notices on domestic terrorism while that of consumption inequality is barely noticeable. The marginal effects of interaction between consumption inequality and transnational terrorism are negative, while that of income inequality is negligible. The corresponding net effects of interacting inequality and terrorism are, for the most part, negative

Does disparity in income and consumption ever incite terrorism in Africa?

The dataset is employed to investigate the empirical linkages between inequality and terrorism, by separately regressing income and consumption inequalities on four indicators of terrorism viz: domestic, transnational, uncertain, and total over the period 1980-2012. Employing a negative binomial regression on a panel dataset covering 46 African economies, the following findings are established. First, both income and consumption inequalities are found to exert ameliorating influence on all terrorism measures with the exception of uncertain terrorism whose impact is almost negligible. Second, the quantitative impacts of both income and consumption inequalities wield more statistical influence on transnational terrorism than domestic terrorism. Third, the income inequality exerts more statistical weight on terrorism measures than consumption inequality across the model specifications. Lastly, the non-trivial statistical impacts of confounding variables such as the lagged value of terrorism, surface areas, and conflicts are consistently brought to the fore across the terror models. In line with these empirical outcomes, policy implications and suggestions for further studies are offered

Comparative Study of Corrosion Characteristics of MCS and KS7 SS in Selected Acid Media

Abstract The challenges of corrosion in manufacturing industries and domestic sectors are enormous and have caused product loss, product contaminations, plants shutdown, loss of customer confidence and non durability of machineries. The objective of this study is to investigate and compare the corrosion resistance of medium Carbon steel (MCS) and KS7 stainless steel in selected acid media. The MCS and KS7 SS were exposed to 0.5M of H 2 SO 4, HCl and HNO 3 environment for 36 days. The weight loss was taken every 3 days in order to evaluate CPR. The results obtained showed that KS7 SS generally offers a better corrosion resistance than the MCS in the selected acids media. The conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that while MCS is found to be unsuitable alloy in sulphuric, nitric and hydrochloric acid environments, KS7 SS is a reliable choice material for fabrication of engineering machines and tools meant for utility in these media

Data for: Natural Resource Rents, Political Regime and Terrorism in Africa

The file contains the dataset used for the empirical analysis of the study titled "Natural Resource Rents, Political Regimes and Terrorism in Africa". The dataset includes domter - Number of domestic terrorism incidents; transter - Number of transnational terrorism incidents; Unter - Number of terrorism incidents whose category is unclear; totter - Total number of terrorism incidents; demo - Dummy variables for democracies scoring a 6 and higher on polity; autoc - Dummy variables for autocracies scoring a -6 or lower on polity; anocy - Dummy variables for anocracies scoring between 5 and -5 on polity; totnat - It is given by the sum of oil rents, natural gas rents, coal rents, mineral rents, forest rents; gdppc - Gross domestic product divided by midyear population. Data are in constant U.S. dollars; pop - Total population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship except for refugees not permanently settled in the country of asylum; ethnic - Ethnic diversity is computed as one minus the Herfindahl index of ethnolinguistic group shares, and reflects the probability that two randomly selected individuals from a population belong to different groups; trade - Export plus import of commodities (% of GDP); conflict - The index of the risk of internal conflict; surface - Total surface area in millions of square miles.THIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV