Purpose This study aims to examine the quantitative effect and direction of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on economic growth in Africa using a sample of 20 African countries from 2003 to 2012 with data obtained from United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the World Bank. Design/methodology/approach The study used panel least squares regression, specifically fixed effect model to examine the quantitative effect of Chinese FDI on economic growth in Africa. The study also used Granger causality test to examine whether a causal relationship exists between economic growth and China’s FDI in Africa. Findings The study finds that a 1 per cent increase in China’s FDI stock in Africa significantly increases Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 0.607 per cent, all things being equal. Furthermore, the study finds that a causal link exists between GDP growth in Africa and China’s FDI and the nature of causality is unidirectional. Practical implications The study recommends that to stimulate Chinese FDI in Africa, free visas must be given to Chinese investors coming into the continent, low tariffs should be imposed on inputs and intermediate goods from China and grant of business operation permit to Chinese investors must be made less bureaucratic. Originality/value This research has not been presented to any journal for publication and is originally written by the authors.

This study empirically examines the effect of foreign banks entry on banking efficiency scores, using the truncated regression data envelopment analysis model for 25s banks in Ghana, over a 6‐year period (2010–2015). We decompose the efficiency scores into three (technical, cost, and allocative efficiency), and the results indicate that banks in Ghana are marginally inefficient in operating closer to their optimal capacity. The findings show that the input‐oriented model slacks are needed to push an inefficient bank closer to where an efficient bank is positioned. From the results, an immediate and a short‐term entry of foreign banks have a consistent negative relationship with both technical‐ and cost‐efficiency scores whereas long‐term entry of foreign banks shows an inconsistent relationship with the three banking efficiency scores. Thus, the drive towards a positive impact of foreign banks entry on the three efficiency scores is dependent on the form of banking efficiency considered and the interaction term between competitive banking environment (competition) and foreign banks' entry. The study suggests that policymakers and managers in emerging markets should improve on their bank efficiencies in both a competitive banking environment and during periods of foreign bank entry. Moreover, managers of banks should make adjustment to their input resources in order to cope with new banking technologies from foreign bank entry—thereby improving banking efficiencies.

What are the characteristics of recipient countries that attract more climate finance in mitigating and adapting to climate change? In this study, we address this question by looking at recipients in 43 Sub-Sahara African countries for the period 2006-2017, and implement several panel regression techniques, including system generalized methods of moments estimations to address potential endogeneity concerns. We also performed sensitivity analysis using panel quantile regressions. The findings show that Sub-Sahara African countries with higher population growth rate, higher poverty levels, better ease of doing business profile, weaker governance policies, weaker control of corruption, stronger rule of law enforcement, deepened social inequality, and better ICT usage, have attracted more climate finance. Policy implications of the study are discussed.

Sustainable development goal 2 (SDG-2) opined that all countries in the world must brace themselves up to end hunger and achieve food security and improve nutrition by 2030. Unfortunately, at the end of 2017, 770 million people representing 10% of the world population were still exposed to severe food insecurity. This statistic has about 1.4% residing in Northern America and Europe and almost 30% in Africa (FAO et al., 2018;Ten Berge et al., 2019). However, it is estimated that by 2050, global food demand is expected to rise by 60% compared to that of /2007(Alexandratos & Bruinsma, 2012. More so, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is experiencing over 300% demand for food attributable to its population growth (Ten Berge et al., 2019;Van Ittersum et al., 2016). Apart from Asia, Africa is next with the highest number of undernourished people with more than 250 million people undernourished.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of climate finance on pollutant emissions (CO 2 , CH 4 and N2O) for a sample of 19 Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) countries over the period 2006 to 2017. Our study augments the traditional Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) with climate finance and our findings affirm the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita income and emissions (i.e. traditional EKC) as well as between climate finance and emissions