Women’s Labour Force Participation: Economic Growth Nexus in Sub-Saharan African Countries

Women’s labour force participation is an aspect of empowerment and a leeway to achieving the SDGs due to the contribution of women’s labour to economic growth. This study investigated the impact of women labour force participation on economic growth in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Important lessons were drawn from Israel as to how Israel has been empowering and currently improving women’s labour force participation and economic growth in general. The study employed a two-step system Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) with panel data from 35 selected SSA countries. The findings showed a positive relationship between gross fixed capital formation, female labour force participation rate, economic growth in SSA countries, and a negative relationship between growth in the region and fertility rate. The study therefore recommended that governments should provide a policy framework to favour and encourage more women’s participation in the SSA region

Start-up Capital Source and Credit Access Participation of Household Nonfarm Enterprises in Nigeria: Evidence from Logistic Regression Model

The main focus of this study is to estimate the influence of the main startup capital source on credit access participation by household nonfarmenterprises. The General Household Survey data for 2018 was adopted to construct a measure of credit access participation. Through binary logistic regression estimation, the result shows that main start-up capital source positively and significantly influences credit access by household nonfarm businesses in Nigeria. This also implies that household nonfarm enterprises that borrowed as main start-up capital source have better chances of credit access participation when compared to those household nonfarm enterprises who do not borrow. However, this study suggests that there is a need for policies that motivate individuals or a group of individuals to borrow as their main start-up capital source in Nigeria, with a view to strengthening their operations on a sustainable basis

TRADE LIBERALIZATION, EXPORT DEPENDENCE AND DIVERSIFICATION OF EXPORTS IN NIGERIA

Nigerian economy over the past few decades has adopted more liberal trade regimes and increased its dependence on trade in primary products without any significant progress in terms of diversifying their export base. Studies have shown that exports concentration on products, sectors, and markets with a limited scope to improve productivity and product quality may result in low growth. Absence of diversification increases vulnerability to external shocks which can impact negatively on exports earnings. This paper examines the impact of trade liberalization and export dependence on export diversification in Nigeria from 1980 to 2018. We employed short-run ECM technique to account for possible short-run disequilibrium in the relationship. We found, among other things, that trade liberalization has negative but insignificant impact on Export Diversification, Export Dependence has positive but insignificant impact on EXD in Nigeria. Foreign direct investment, gross national expenditure and financial development exact positive and significant impacts on export diversification in Nigeria.  Specifically, it found that a 1% point increase in FDI would increase EXD by approximately 30%, while a 1% increase in gross national expenditure would, in the short-run, significantly increase exchange rate diversification by 18%, other factors remaining constant. On this basis, the paper recommends that for exports of products to be diversified in Nigeria, the free trade zone policy needs to be strengthened by the government to help open up more operational areas such as the Calabar and Lagos free trade zones