This study provides an empirical assessment of infrastructure and inclusive growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). An inclusive growth index has been constructed and then used to test the infrastructure–inclusive growth nexus. The study has also examined whether infrastructure has a distributive impact on income groups. The overall analysis employed panel data collected from 31 SSA countries over the period 2003–17. The study found a positive link between infrastructure and inclusive growth. These results were significant for energy, transport and information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructures. It was also found that poorer people gain more benefits from the listed infrastructures than the rich, which shows that infrastructure plays an important role in the distribution of income. The overall results imply that infrastructure is vital in reducing income disparities and enhancing shared prosperity in SSA. Policies for increasing access and affordability of infrastructure services are highly recommended to promote inclusion.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) under the auspices of the Chinese government was created as a regional integration and development model between China and her trade partners. Arguments have been raised as to whether this initiative will be beneficial to participating countries in the long run. We set to examine how to estimate this trade initiative by comparing the relative estimation powers of the traditional gravity model with the neural network analysis using detailed bilateral trade exports data from 1990 to 2017. The results show that neural networks are better than the gravity model approach in learning and clarifying international trade estimation. The neural networks with fixed country effects showed a more accurate estimation compared to a baseline model with country-year fixed effects, as in the OLS estimator and Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood. On the other hand, the analysis indicated that more than 50% of the 6 participating East African countries in the BRI were able to attain their predicted targets. Kenya achieved an 80% (4 of 5) target. Drawing from the lessons of the BRI and the use of neural network model, it will serve as an important reference point by which other international trade interventions could be measured and compared.

Development of new technological innovations in networks, platforms, and financial institutions has empowered m-banking service providers to target their business strategies plan with confidence. Nevertheless, lots of service innovations have failed to generate revenue due to lagging adoption issues. Even though, several prior researches have focused on the factors that influence the acceptance of mbanking, there is limited empirical study which simultaneously take the success factors (perceived benefit) and resistance factors (perceived sacrifice) that contribute to the customers adoption of m-banking. Furthermore, most previous researches investigate on the overall aspects related to the adoption of mobile banking, have used multiple regression methods (structural equation modeling or technology acceptance technique) or some MCDM tools. However, these studies still have some shortcoming due to lack of delivering the enough information about these factors and their prioritizing facets. Nowadays, only those organizations which major goal is to achieve customer's expectations with maximum quality can be successful in the market environment. This research reviewed the literature, took the advice from the experts in the field of m-banking service, and constructed the structural hierarchical table of the factors that affecting perceived value on consumers' adoption of mobile banking. Via a pairwise comparisons scale, a questionnaire designated was distributed to some university students in Lomé-Togo and later used AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) to weigh each criteria, sub-criteria and alternative in order to rank them according to their preference. The finding revealed that financial risk is the utmost factor impacting the m-banking adoption, follow by money saved element. Both factors explain how consumers are more concerned with the financial or monetary issues and far ahead Security & Privacy risk come to confirm that, Togolese Banking industry should guarantee the safety and personal detail issues when customers are dealing with this m-banking technology.

The rate of youth unemployment has been a major challenge for preceding and consecutive Ghanaian governments. There is evidence to suggest how different economic interventions to bridge this gap have failed to yield the expected results. The intended beneficiaries of these interventions are caught in a quagmire of what they perceive as opportunities within the environment which are sometimes divergent from that of government. This is due to the influencing role of two main factors: their knowledge and perception. We carry out a study to reveal the relationship that exist between entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial intentions and how knowledge and perception of the youth mediate this relationship. A sample survey of 187 youth using questionnaires were administered and the results analyzed using the partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Overall, entrepreneurial knowledge and perception variables showed a partial mediation in their relationship with entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial intention. Entrepreneurial perception showed a higher mediating effect of the two mediators on the target construct, entrepreneurial intention. Entrepreneurial perception showed the highest Cronbach’s alpha of .90 of all the variables. We advance the theory of entrepreneurship intention to show how the dual mediating interactivities are influenced by the entrepreneurship environment. The need to build a supportive entrepreneurial environment is critical in transforming the youth perception to boost their knowledge in entrepreneurship to engage in business enterprises. These are critical for policy makers, implementers, and entrepreneurial trainers.

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