The study sought to establish the drivers of financial inclusion in Southern Africa with a specific focus on South Africa. Financial inclusion has been a topic of global interest due to the negative impact of financial exclusion in addressing socio-economic issues like poverty. Using the logit model, the study discovered that financial inclusion is driven by age, education level, the total salary proxy of income, race, gender, and marital status. The variable gender was the only factor with a negative influence on financial inclusion all other significant variables had a positive influence on financial inclusion. As a result, governments in Africa should encourage the use of financial services and products among women, Black Africans, Coloureds and the youths. Products and services tailor-made to satisfy the needs of these groups should be designed to improve financial inclusion among them. This initiative will go a long way in addressing poverty, inequality, and unemployment in the country.
COVID-19 has left an unmistakable impression on the world stage. It has altered the global socio-economic landscape, forcing individuals to adapt and embrace new ways of doing business, as well as new ways of life. One of the most significant effects of the pandemic was to hasten the adoption of digital technologies by many areas of the global economy. Campus closures were observed in the higher education sector, putting an end to long-standing face-to-face teaching and learning. This necessitated the most rapid paradigm shift ever seen in this industry to continue educating and learning. An abrupt change to online learning, which is primarily reliant on digital technologies, occurred. As a result, the purpose of this article is to investigate and identify ten critical digital transformation lessons from COVID-19 for South African higher education institutions. Secondary data gathered from the literature research were used to meet the study’s goal. The study concluded by laying out the most important digital transformation lessons for South Africa, including the notion that the country should strive to build digital capabilities because digital technology gaps remain wide, among other things.
Zimbabwe has experienced an economic meltdown dating back to 2000, which created perennial economic woes such as a liquidity crisis that continued haunting the country to date. Various possible solutions were explored but did not yield the desired results. Amongst the explored solutions was an introduction of surrogate currency specifically to curb the liquidity crisis. This paper sought to explore the effects of using "surrogate currency" to address the liquidity crisis in Zimbabwe by employing a desk review. Currently, there is a dearth of literature on using surrogate currency in African countries. Hence this study contributes to the existing literature on the use of such currency. The review established that the surrogate currency led to the emergence of bad money as propounded by Gresham’s law of currency systems. Moreover, the surrogate currency rapidly lost its value, whereas the introduction of the surrogate currency failed to address the liquidity crisis, leading to other socio-economic challenges. Finally, financial reporting under the surrogate currency became a challenge as well. This study recommends the withdrawal of the surrogate currency and the use of multicurrency along with the promotion of products for export to attract more foreign currency into the economy.
This research aims to explore the extent of COVID-19 reporting by the banking sector in a developing economy after the 2020 experience in the absence of known pandemic standards. The subject of this research is the 2021 top six banks from South Africa, a country classified as a developing economy. An unobtrusive research method was employed. Data were collected from the banks’ integrated reports for 2020/2021 depending on the banks’ financial year period. Document analysis was done and a technique of counting and recording the number of mentions for each COVID-19 content or capital category was employed. Findings indicated that Standard Bank, which was ranked top of the six, took the lead in the extent of COVID-19 reporting based on a recently suggested reporting framework that has not yet been contrasted by the rest of the researchers. A correlation analysis showed a significant positive relationship between the bank size and the extent of COVID-19 disclosure by the sampled banks. The study indicated that the top South African banks significantly reported on the COVID-19 pandemic despite the absence of guiding reporting standards. However, there is a need for another study to develop an index that will show different levels of disclosure extent.
The COVID-19 pandemic struck the global community in December 2019 in China and by the beginning of 2020, it had spread to many other countries. The pandemic affected people’s lives and most business sectors. Its impact on business organizations warranted disclosure in the integrated reports for information to investors and other stakeholders. In the absence of a known pandemic disclosure framework, some researchers developed a COVID-19 pandemic reporting framework based on the pre-existing integrated reporting framework, literature from medical, scientific and pharmaceutical field journals, newspapers, and specialized websites as well as interviews of various professional investors in 2020 to guide firms in disclosing COVID-19 issues. This framework has not yet been contrasted by researchers to date. With challenges known to exist in trying to determine the extent of the pandemic disclosure, the objective of this study is to develop a conceptual reference disclosure index for future pandemics using the COVID-19 pandemic as a baseline. The pandemic was severe in 2020 but started to abate in 2021 due to the development of vaccines. COVID-19 information was used to develop the proposed index, and it is anticipated that the proposed index will also be useful for future pandemics. The proposed index should be instrumental in determining the extent of the pandemic disclosure by companies, information that is crucial for investors and all stakeholders for decision making. As there is also paucity in literature on COVID-19 because it is a new experience, this study will contribute to the body of literature in this field.
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