This study contributes to the literature on income inequality by providing evidence that financial development not only impacts income distribution, but the effects can improve when there is a strong institutional framework. Using the system-generalised method of moments (sys-GMM) technique on a sample of 42 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1996 to 2015, our major findings are summarised as follows: (1) inequality is persistent in the region (2) financial development does not significantly reduce income inequality; and (3) the control of corruption and its interaction with domestic credit exhibit an inverted-U relation with income inequality. Thus, policies that will reduce income inequality require that corruption be controlled given increase in domestic credit.

In the last 37 years Nigeria has undergone several stages of financial reforms with different impacts on the economy. Hence, this paper empirically analyses the impact of financial reforms on credit growth in Nigeria using annual data from 1980 to 2016. The research work hinges on the theoretical underpinning of the McKinnon-Shaw hypothesis on the relevance of financial reforms in a lagging economy. Analysing the data with autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) error correction representation and bounds testing techniques, we notably find evidence to this hypothesis and state that at higher real interest rate there is increased financial intermediation evidenced by credit growth. Other findings are that in the long-run, financial system deposits, inflation rate and per capita GDP are strong asymmetrical predictors of credit growth and real interest rate (the financial reform indicator) while the short-run relationships are indicator-specific. We further show that a long-run cointegration relationship exists between domestic credit and other covariates and likewise between the real interest rate and its regressors.

This study is set out to examine the influence of internet usage and innovation in enhancing human development in Economic Community of West African States (ECO-WAS) countries. It tests the consistency of literature with the experience of ECOWAS countries, thus investigating the nature of the relationship between Internet adoption, innovation and human development. The objectives of the study are essential as the advent of Internet technology signalled the birth of a revolution that would later prove to be a difference maker between developed and developing countries. With the introduction of the Internet, geographical boundaries were broken, the interaction between people became easier and faster, trade became universal, and digital and Internet economies began to emerge. These spin-offs affected most areas of human endeavour. Many have argued that the pace of globalisation presently being witnessed would have been

As a response to a digital era that is seen as a core element of global digitalisation, financial development in many countries including those in the African continent experienced varying patterns. These have made some countries to be categorised as relatively high and others relatively low in terms of their scale on digital economy. Thus, this study empirically investigates the interaction of information and communication technology (ICT) adoption and innovation, and the role of this digitalisation interaction on financial development in Africa, and across the sub-regions. It utilises the Bayesian Vector Auto-Regressive (BVAR) modelling to simulate the impulse response function and variance decomposition across Africa. The study finds that ICTinnovation interaction shock positively drives financial development across all of 6 datasets. This implies that for multinational corporations (MNCs) and other economic agents, ICTinnovation interaction should be strongly applied across all sectors to drive financial development since all sectors require finances to improve performance. Thus, contributes to the empirical testing of the theoretical reflections of digitalisation and digital economy interaction in African countries.

The paper reviewed the formulation and implementation of the Nigerian national policy of education that was enacted in 1977. Though the document featured lot of laudable policies, feedback from key stakeholders in education revealed that the implementation of the policy was deficient and need urgent attention for the country to experience the much need development.