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This study empirically examined the impact of external debt on economic growth. Also, the interactions of governance, external debt and external debt volatility were further investigated with emphasize on the interective effect of governance as proxied by Kaufmann, D., (2007) quality governance measures such as; government effectiveness, political stability, voice and accountability, regulatory quality and corruption control on economic growth. The study utilized annual time series data, focusing on thirty selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 1997 to 2020. The Dynamic System Generalised Method of Moments estimation technique was adopted while controlling for conventional sources of economic growth. Empirical findings from the study reveal that external debt and external debt volatility have a negative and significant impact on economic growth in SSA. Furthermore, the interaction of governance indicators, external debt and its volatility, had a positive impact on economic growth in SSA. This study recommends that SSA government should endeavor to avoid excessive external debt to promote the regions’ capacity to invest in her financial prospects, and to circumvent the danger of repayment of loans using her small income. The SSA governments should also improve the quality of governance by ensuring political stability, minimising corruption, implementing sound policies and regulations that can permit and promote economic growth through the development of the private sector. The governments must ensure that every borrowed debt is properly supervised and utilised for its purposes to spur economic growth. More so, the Guidotti-Greenspan rule of Reserve adequacy should be applied to keep excess borrowings in check.

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PurposeThis paper aims to assess the impact of digital financial innovation on financial system development in Common Market for eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). This paper evaluates the dynamic relationship between digital financial innovation measures and financial system development using time series data from COMESA countries for the period 1997–2019.Design/methodology/approachA dynamic autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) was adopted and the mean group (MG), pooled mean group (PMG) and dynamic fixed effect (DFE) of the model were estimated to evaluate the short- and long-run impact. In addition, the dynamic generalized method of moments (DGMM) was adopted for a robustness check. The Hausman test results show PMG to be the most consistent and efficient estimator, while the coefficient of lagged dependent variable of different GMM is less than the fixed effect coefficient, and, as such, suggests system GMM is the most suitable estimator. Data for the study were sourced from World Bank Development Indicator (WDI, 2020), World Governance Indicator (WGI, 2020) and World Bank Global Financial Development Database (GFD, 2020).FindingsThe result shows that digital financial innovation significantly impacts financial system development in the long run. As such, the evidence revealed that automated teller machines (ATMs), point of sale (POS), mobile payments (MP) and mobile banking are significant and contribute positively to financial system development in the long run, while mobile money (MM) and Internet banking (INB) are insignificant but exhibit positive and inverse relationship with financial development respectively. Further investigation revealed that institutional quality and a stable macroeconomic environment including their interactive term are significantly imperative in predicting financial system development in the COMESA region.Practical implicationsResearchers recommend a cohesive and conscious policy that would checkmate the divergence in the short run and suggest a common regional innovative financial strategy that could be pursued to incentivize technology transfer needed to promote financial system development in the long run. More so, plausible product and process innovations may be adapted to complement innovative institutions in the different components of the COMESA financial system.Social implicationsDigital financial innovation services if well managed increase the inherent benefits in financial system development.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper presents new background information on digital financial innovation that may stimulate the development of the financial system, particularly in the COMESA region. It also exposes the relevance of digital financial innovation, institutional quality and stable macroeconomic environment as well as their interactive effect on COMESA financial system development.

The study focusses on evaluating oil price movement and revenue generation in Nigeria with emphasis on the era of pre and post covid-19 pandemic. Measures such as crude oil price, domestic production, crude oil export and revenue, and revenue generation were assessed before, during and after covid-19 pandemic. The evidence shows that oil price and revenue generation were negatively affected during covid-19 pandemic era due to restriction on the movement of people and economic activities. Hence, the study further revealed a drastic fall in crude oil price and export, as well as domestic production (mbd) especially during the first quarter of 2020. While crude oil price appreciated slightly from June, the export and domestic production plummeted with a corresponding decrease in revenue generation which dropped deeply from $47 billion USD in 2019 to $8 billion USD in 2020. Further evaluation revealed that after the introduction of some measures by the government authorities, the Nigerian economic start to recover, which results to a slight improvement in crude oil price in December 2020, but later fell to 40.28 mbd in march 2021. Thus, other indicators such as domestic production and crude oil export has no sign of recovery between this period except for revenue generation which increases by $4 billion USD. Moreso, to control the aftermath of pandemic, we suggest for cohesive policy measures such as educating people on the benefits of covid-19 vaccines and proper enforcement on the use of facemask. In turn, this will reduce the spread and promote economic activities in Nigeria. In addition, policies that could regulate oil price movement should be initiated. Consequently, it may likely encourage increase in revenue generation in Nigeria.