Should Africa rather delay investments in renewable energy given their trivial contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions? This is strongly discouraged given the existing benefits of increased renewable energy investments in an African economy. Nigeria, the leading African economy is adopted as a representative to illustrate the prospects of improved (renewable) energy security in Africa. This study develops a dynamic recursive general equilibrium model to evaluate the prospects of renewable energy investment paths for Africa towards improving its energy security levels. Unlike other competing models, this model allows businesses to dynamically substitute between intermediate renewable energy and fossil fuel products, thus, taking active steps towards achieving a green economy. The results show that present economic welfare will be sacrificed for future welfare benefits and improved energy security. This confirms the transitioning of an economy from a lower steady state to a higher steady state path as postulated by the Solow model. However, a sustained gradual investment in the renewable energy sector yields the least welfare loss as the economy transitions through its energy security path. The one-off policy design produces relatively higher results in the immediate future while the sustained gradual incremental path smoothens these results into the far future. The results confirm that Africa’s demand for renewable energies substantially outweighs its supply, thereby suggesting a potential and non-trivial market for renewable energies, nonetheless. Results-based policies that are geared towards improving energy security are formulated for the African economies.

The rising spate of inflation in Nigeria has become worrisome in recent years, considering its implications on the quest for tourism development in the country. This study, therefore, empirically evaluates the effect of inflation on the Nigerian tourism industry. Two tourism indicators (tourism arrivals and tourism receipt) are employed in this study for robustness and quarterly data on relevant variables for the period between 1995Q1 and 2020Q4 were analysed using different econometric approaches. The results of all the estimation methods unanimously revealed a trade-off between inflation and the two tourism indicators, signalling that inflation dissuades international tourist arrival and lower tourism revenue in Nigeria. Hence, the Nigerian monetary authority must ensure price stability by keeping the inflation rate at a desirable level in a bid to foster tourism development in the country.

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Authors: Isiaka Raifu Akande and Joshua Adeyemi Afolabi

This study simulates the effect of fuel subsidy removal on different categories of inflation in Nigeria using the novel dynamic simulated autoregressive distributed lag framework. Findings revealed heterogeneity in the inflationary effect of an increase in premium motor spirit price across locations, and that the recent fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria will have long-lasting negative inflationary effects.

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Authors: Isiaka Akande Raifu, Joshua Adeyemi Afolabi
 

This study examines the effect of access to clean fuel and technology on health outcomes, drawing a comparison between Africa and Asia over the period 2000–2021. Using Generalised Least Squares, our findings revealed that access to clean fuel and technology improves health outcomes in both regions, suggesting that having access to clean fuel and technology is indispensable to improving health outcomes in Africa and Asia. Thus, governments in the two regions should prioritise and invest in technology that provides access to clean energy.

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Authors: Isiaka Raifu Akande and Nantap Rejoice Ditep

A viable economy's hallmark is its ability to generate positive growth rates and its capacity to sustain such growth, especially during a crisis. Economic crises have the potential to induce uncertainty, reverse pre-crisis economic gains and force preexisting challenges to reemerge, necessitating actions on building economic resilience. Given the fragility of most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the current paper evaluates the role of institutional quality (INSQ) and human capital development in boosting economic resilience in SSA. The sampled countries were classified into fragile and resilient countries. Annual data spanning 2000–2021 was obtained and analyzed using the Bias-Corrected Method of Moments (BCMM) estimation method, which can adequately account for cross-sectional dependence, endogeneity, and heterogeneity in the sample.

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Authors: Joshua Adeyemi Afolabi, Isiaka Akande Raifu