Financial development is influenced by the dynamics of multiple factors which have remained insufficiently explored up to date. In view of this, an attempt is made in this paper to investigate the impact of internet adoption on financial development in sub‐Saharan Africa, using Nigeria and Kenya as case studies. The dynamic ordinary least squares and vector error correction mechanism methods were employed in the study which revealed that the internet, complemented by financial openness, exerted a significant positive impact on financial development in the period 2000–16. The null hypothesis which states that the internet does not encourage financial development is therefore rejected. It follows that the level of financial development in both countries, and indeed most countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, could be enhanced by adopting appropriate policies that encourage more inclusive use of the internet. The policy recommendations of this study therefore include (i) relaxing the stringent requirements for licensing internet operators in order to make more services available for financial transactions, (ii) integrating internet technology into the national infrastructure framework in order to sustain its application, (iii) fostering local skills and expertise that will be maintaining internet infrastructure and (iv) providing a legal framework that protects personal information and ensures responsible usage of internet.

This study provides empirical insights on the functioning of regional trade agreements within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) by identifying bilateral trade barriers that affect the extent of trade flows among member countries. Also, it highlights some trade barrier indicators that are rarely covered in extant studies, such as the multilateral resistance term, the extent of trade complementarity, and the presence of economic integration agreements among ECOWAS member countries. We then provide augmented gravity model estimation on the determinants of bilateral trade in the region. We find, among other things, that trade complementarity had a positive and significant effect on bilateral trade within the sub‐region region. Other important determinants of intra‐regional trade include multilateral trade resistance and economic integration agreements — meaning that countries with some kind of agreement like the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) tend to trade more among themselves than other member countries.

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The Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesized pollution as a monotonic function of income which implies that as an economy develops, pollution level starts to increase but reaching a certain threshold the relation reverses. This study investigates the relationship between GDP per capita income and environmental degradation in Western Africa region using panel data analysis for the period 1990-2012. Our specific objective was to estimate EKC for four indicators of environmental quality such as CO 2 emissions, Suspended particulate matter (PM10), lack of access to sanitation facilities and lack of access to safe drinking water; and establish whether these pollutants exhibit an inverted u-shape function. Likewise, we subject our estimated relationship to sensitivity checks to ensure robustness to changes in assumption Environmental Management and Sustainable Development ISSN 2164-7682 2015 www.macrothink.org/emsd 70 and estimation techniques, an aspect inherently lacking in most EKC literature. The study could not find an unambiguous evidence of an inverted u-shaped relationship for CO 2 emissions while the other point source pollutants confirmed the EKC theory. We subjected our estimation to further robustness checks by ascertaining the statistical properties of the variables used and examined the long run sustainability; results were found to be consistent and suitable for policy inferences.

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