FLOODING AND PHYSICAL PLANNING IN URBAN AREAS IN WEST AFRICA: SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS OF ACCRA, GHANA

The need to explore the causes of the increasing incidences of flooding in West Africa in recent years motivated the investigation carried out in this research. It is natural to want to attribute the situation to climate change and the increased occurrences of high intensity rainfall predicted as a consequence. However, flooding and the devastation caused by it are not just determined by rainfall and runoff; human influences which significantly modify the nature of the ground surface and its hydrological response to rainfall do also play a major role. The research used Accra as a case study city and involved a visit to the city to interview local experts, officials of agencies responsible for flooding matters and physical planning. The visit also involved collection of data relevant to the problem and afforded the physical inspection of the infrastructural facilities in place for coping with the flooding problems. Analysis of the data revealed that for the city, there is no evidence that unusual rainfall has been occurring recently that could explain the increased occurrences of flooding being experienced. Rather, the cause of the problem is the lack of, drainage facilities to collect the storm water for safe disposal. These could in turn be attributed to the ineffective planning regulations which either ignore or even condone the illegal erection of buildings and other structures on floodplains, and the unhealthy habit of dumping refuse and other solid wastes in the usually open channel drainage systems. It is recommended that in order to have a long-lasting solution to the flooding problems, the city and others in similar situation should embrace sustainable urban drainage systems.Flooding, planning, urban cities, waste dumping.

Investigating Finance-Growth Nexus: Further Evidence from Nigeria

This study investigates the influence of financial sector development on economic growth in Nigeria during the period 1982 to 2015. As such, the study obtained annual secondary data from the Central Bank of Nigeria statistical bulletins and World Bank financial database. The empirical model for this study examines growth in savings, growth in exchange rate, growth in government expenditure, growth in stock market capitalization, growth in credit to private sector, growth in gross capital formation, growth in trade openness and growth in broad money on economic growth in Nigeria. The multiple regression output reveals that growth in government expenditure and growth in gross capital formation are statistically significant on economic growth in Nigeria at 1% and 10% respectively under the period under investigation while other regressors in the model prove to be statistically insignificant. VAR test shows that there is considerable short-run causality running from lags of regressors to economic growth in Nigeria except for lag 1 of growth in exchange rate and lag 2 of growth in credit to private sector. The granger causality test reveals the existence of bi-directional causality between financial sector development and economic growth in Nigeria during the period under investigation. Hence, this study supports the ‘feedback hypothesis’ view on finance-growth. Based on these empirical results, this study recommends effective channeling of funds to the private sector and autonomy of the Central Bank of Nigeria in the use of monetary policy tools

Impediments to mortgage borrowing for the under-served urban household in South Africa

This paper examines impediments to mortgage borrowing in South Africa. The analysis is premised on the fact that, despite South Africa's relatively sophisticated financial system compared to other countries in sub Saharan Africa, its housing finance system has not been able to replicate for the low to moderate income families a system that allows them access to adequate formal housing finance. The paper is in three parts. Firstly, it gives an overview of the current demographic and housing situation in South Africa and provides an awareness of developments in the housing market, especially for the suburban sector, which helped to ascertain the nature of the housing finance problem. Secondly, empirical findings on the impediments to household borrowing are presented in the context of a case study of Umlazi, near Durban in KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa. This helps in identifying what needs to be done to improve institutional mortgage borrowing by the under-served urban market. Based on this analysis, the paper suggests measures that could enhance the affordability and access to adequate institutional finance in the study area and economies in similar situations. Key Words: affordability, household, mortgage, suburban, under-served Jnl of Social Development in Africa Vol.19(1) 2004: 7-3

An outcome-based resource allocation model for local education services in Wales

Funding for local services such as education has for long been allocated on formulae claiming to reflect local variations in needs, although in practice these have often tended to reflect the patterns of past expenditure. The idea that such formulae might reflect explicit outcome criteria is not new, but only with the recent development of integrated multilevel databases has it become possible to develop this approach in a serious way. We identify the essential requirements of an outcome approach and discuss variant criteria in such a system. Data for the whole compulsory-age-range state school system in Wales are analysed to generate models predicting key attainment levels for individual pupils at 11 and 16. These are complemented by models for school costs and the incidence of special educational needs. Using these models it is possible to estimate the cost of achieving various target degrees of improvement or equalisation of outcomes, or compensation for relevant social disadvantages, balanced against constraints on the maximum degree of redistribution (via minimum school budgets). The results indicate that it is certainly possible to envisage such a system in operation, albeit subject to gradualist implementation, although the redistribution could have implications for particular localities which were controversial.