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Synopsis

The research problem

This paper sought to ascertain whether IFRS adoption approaches impact accounting quality. Specifically, as some countries utilize IFRS without modifications while others modify IFRS to suit their local context, we aimed to test whether these differences in IFRS adoption approaches have implications for accounting quality.

Motivation

Prior studies focused on the impact of IFRS adoption on accounting quality without considering the different approaches used by the adopting jurisdictions. Such differences affect the version of IFRS utilized at the country level. We refer to jurisdictions as adopters of IFRS when the IASB’s version of IFRS is utilized without modifications. In contrast, jurisdictions where the IFRS standards are modified at the national or regional level are called adapters. We also recognize the role of enforcement; thus, we first examined whether IFRS adoption and enforcement influence accounting quality. Second, we compared the accounting quality for adopters and adapters of the standards.

The test hypotheses

Our first hypothesis is that the quality of enforcement has a stronger effect on accounting quality than the adoption of IFRS. Second, adapters will have higher accounting quality than adopters of IFRS.

Target population

We focused on the reporting of companies in African countries. These jurisdictions have not been sufficiently examined in prior studies.

Adopted methodology

We use panel data estimation, specifically, random-effects model.

Analyses

We examined accounting quality for pre- and post-IFRS reporting based on 3946 firm-year observations from six African countries over 18 years. Our analysis of the adoption approach is based on 3736 firm-year observations for companies utilizing IFRS. Except for Egypt, which used a modified version of IFRS, other countries in our sample utilized the IASB’s version of IFRS. Using various standard metrics for accounting quality (earnings management, timely loss recognition, and value relevance), we ascertained whether adaption is associated with higher accounting quality compared to adoption.

Findings

The results indicate that IFRS adoption and enforcement proxy are not associated with accounting quality, but other institutional factors are. Adoption of the standards is less important for accounting quality than the existing institutions. With regard to the adoption approach used, adopters demonstrated higher accounting quality for accounting-based measures, less income smoothing, and more timely loss recognition than the adapters. The adopters also exhibited greater value relevance, which suggests that their reporting was better able to capture information that affects firm value. The adoption approaches may influence different dimensions of accounting quality, and the resulting differences are important for users, companies, and standard setters to consider.

Within wider debates on sustainability and digitalisation, frugal innovation (FI) scholars largely assume that digital technologies are important for FI in realising more sustainable outcomes. However, very few studies interrogate this causality. To tackle this challenge, we connect FI with digitalisation. Thereto, we conceptualise digital technologies as and within FIs and discuss three frugality dimensions to analyse three empirical case studies of digitally-enabled FIs. We use these cases to introduce new nuances on how digitalisation affects frugality and scaling. Our results unveil that digitalisation can increase frugality by enabling more accessible and affordable solutions through new flexible funding schemes and pay-as-you-go models. However, our evidence also implies decreasing frugality by an increase in end-user costs and digital exclusion. Likewise, increasing frugality through complexity reduction seems mainly to benefit intermediaries and frugal innovators themselves, whereas benefits of digitalisation in terms of complexity reduction for end-users seem to be limited. Digitalisation can even increase complexity for end-users, thus suggesting decreasing frugality. Finally, just like with non-digital innovations, scaling of digitally enabled innovations is dependent on the quality of logistical infrastructure and local adaptation practices. Moreover, scaling of digitally-enabled innovations is limited to users in regions with a proper ICT infrastructure.

The adoption of air conditioning (AC) could grow exponentially across Africa under the joint effect of acute warming, sustained income growth, and rapid urbanization. The implications for greenhouse gas emissions will crucially depend on the energy efficiency of the models adopted. Little is known, however, about how energy efficiency information is conveyed to consumers in these markets. To fill this gap, we gathered data on cooling appliances characteristics from Africa’s largest e-commerce platform, serving 13 countries — Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Uganda. We find that less than 10% of the AC models available on the marketplace (N = 1229) have information disclosed about their energy performance. Information disclosure appears to be highly idiosyncratic with weak strategic motives. This overall lack of information about energy efficiency represents an important challenge for enforcing energy performance standards and steering demand toward energy-efficient cooling appliances.

As China projects itself as an emerging donor of development aid, its development cooperation with Africa has garnered unprecedented attention from the world. While China is faced with many challenges in aid practices in Africa despite its remarkable achievements over the past decades, both developed countries and African countries set high expectations for China’s potential contribution. Against this backdrop, it is crucial for China to enhance trilateral cooperation with developed donors and share experience with them on how to manage aid programs. Based on successful cooperation in the past, China-U.S.-Africa trilateral cooperation will not only strengthen China-U.S. bilateral ties, but also improve China’s overall aid effectiveness to Africa. In the future, China should initiate more development cooperation programs and work to create a coordinating mechanism with the United States in areas of their common understanding and interests; it should also go beyond traditional means of assistance and try to get involved in the U.S.-led public-private partnership (PPP) projects.

This article examines the implications of the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for Africa’s connectivity. The BRI seeks to rebuild the ancient Silk Road trade route with the overall goal of opening global markets, thus creating a trade and investment network involving three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. Using secondary data, this article assesses the opportunities and potential challenges of the BRI for Africa with a special focus on various BRI national projects. It concludes that China’s involvement in infrastructure projects in Africa and the BRI’s vision for increased connectivity among beneficiary countries can lead to integrated and streamlined economic and infrastructure development in Africa, while improving China’s corporate and product image, generating mutual benefits to both China and Africa. This article also argues that for those BRI-based benefits to materialize, certain challenges need to be dealt with, particularly security risks and corruption, which could increase the long-term costs of infrastructure projects for countries involved.

China and the United States are among the most important external stakeholders in Africa’s peace, security, and prosperity. The African continent, with some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, an expanding consumer base, and an exploding youth population, has recently witnessed intensifying China-U.S. competition. In economic and trade terms, the United States is playing catch-up as Beijing has long ago overtaken Washington as the continent’s largest trading partner and investor. While China regards Africa’s adherence to the “One China” principle as the only political prerequisite for its engagement with the continent, the United States views greater democracy and rule of law in Africa as in the best interests of both. China’s security presence in Africa pales in comparison with that of the United States, as Washington boasts an extensive network of military bases on the continent while Beijing’s peace and security engagement mainly involves multilateral UN peacekeeping operations and bilateral security cooperation, such as arms sales and training programs. However, growing China-U.S. competition does not necessarily crowd out shared interests or preclude closer coordination in specific areas, for example, market development, infrastructure building, anti-piracy, health capacity-building, and so on. By fending off a senseless ideological contest, respecting each other’s core interests in Africa, accommodating Africans’ development aspirations and security concerns, Beijing and Washington can find more common ground than many believe.

Three major factors have made closer China-UK cooperation on African peace and security not only desirable but also feasible: expanding convergence of outlook and overlap of interests, the pan-African vision of peace and development as outlined in Agenda 2063, and the launch of a global comprehensive strategic partnership between Beijing and London. At the same time, the increasing securitization of Britain’s aid policy, Africans’ growing concern about unwarranted external intervention in continental affairs, and disparate development priorities may present significant challenges for closer trilateral coordination. The prospects of China-UK cooperation on African peace and security depend on whether Beijing and London can narrow differences, achieve policy alignment, and build a multilayered security cooperation mechanism. This article proposes three priorities where closer three-way coordination can contribute to African peace and security: a regularized China-UK-Africa peace dialogue, a development-centered approach to conflict prevention and response, and increased cooperation on nontraditional security risks.

China’s security presence has been growing steadily in proportion to the progress of the Belt and Road Initiative, reflected in a larger military footprint in Africa in the form of logistical and resupply bases. The BRI/military nexus has allowed Beijing to play a larger role in African affairs more recently, raising alarms in the United States and the European Union. Despite growing speculation and skepticism in some quarters, African societies still welcome Beijing’s increasing investment and deeper involvement in regional security matters. After Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea is the most likely nation to host the next Chinese military base. But at the same time, the West’s scrutiny of Beijing’s rising profile and deeper security involvement in Africa will also grow as China continues to chip away at the West’s influence on the continent. A steadier security footing for China would change great power dynamics in the region even as competition between Beijing on the one hand and Washington and Brussels on the other will still be limited to the economic and financial domains.

Huge debt from multilateral institutions, countries, and private creditors, unsustainable loans with onerous default conditions, investments that serve to foster political authority, treaties, and trading relations with unequal partners have set the African continent on a course that threatens its human and economic development prospects. While the multilateral relations, treaties, loans, and investments represent major opportunities for African countries to boost growth, reduce poverty, build infrastructures, and broaden economically, they could also constrain developments, and undermine the capacity of poorer African countries to create the conditions for the realization of human rights. It has been established that debt repayment is often carried out at the expense of basic human rights. In addition, debt servicing and harmful conditions linked to loans and debt relief often limit investment in and undermine the provision of essential public services. The study examined the various factors related to human rights, particularly in the context of China’s loans and financial investment in African countries. It delves into specific human rights concerns relating to socioeconomic, cultural, civil, political, and environmental rights to provide a comprehensive understanding of the human rights issues arising from China’s engagement with African countries. Human rights have also been adopted as measuring tools to assess, measure, and prevent the impact of financial relations, debt burdens, and assistance.

The number of global COVID19 cases has just exceeded 15 million, and there is mounting evidence for a devastating economic impact from this illness. Although COVID19 affected primarily China, Europe, and North America during the first half of 2020, now this disease is accelerating in the resource-poor nations of the Global South. Across Latin America, South Asia, and Africa, COVID19 is expected to push up to 100 million people into extreme poverty, eroding many of the economic gains achieved over the last five years. COVID19 vaccines will be required to help control the pandemic, especially in low- and middle-income nations. These will have important health benefits, but might also prevent further economic devastation. The term “antipoverty vaccines” has been used to refer to vaccines to prevent neglected tropical diseases that affect worker productivity, child development, and the health of girls and women. COVID19 vaccines could also become important antipoverty technologies provided we find ways to scale and distribute them as affordable vaccines. Two vaccines now being accelerated for global health include whole inactivated virus and recombinant protein vaccines. These might become essential tools for combating global poverty.

From modest beginnings in 1960, China has expanded its foreign assistance and investments in Africa and has recently become a highly visible actor in Africa’s lending landscape. With China’s financial support, African countries are transitioning from “poor countries” to “developing countries”, and China’s investments in Africa have made the continent more attractive to other external investors. However, China’s engagements in Africa are labeled in extreme connotations as either being the best economic “Partner” that Africa has had since the post-colonial era or just the latest “Predator” coming to pillage Africa’s remaining natural resources. Why such connotations? Why do media around the world, especially Western media, criticize China’s engagements in Africa? Is it because China has threatened Western countries’ interests in Africa or is it about the overhyped debate about African countries’ high “external debt” problem? Using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper examines those critics who argue that recognizing China’s engagements in Africa is the first step toward understanding China’s “peaceful rise” and hopefully stymie further false accusations.

The extant literature suggests a significant association between oil prices and unemployment. However, the relevant literature is unclear on how oil prices impact unemployment in oil-importing economies. In this study, we empirically examine the impact of oil prices on unemployment in 29 African oil-importing economies employing the linear and nonlinear panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) techniques. Our findings demonstrate a negative and significant relationship between oil prices and unemployment in the short run. In contrast, we observe a direct but weak association between unemployment and oil prices in the long run. Besides, unemployment reacts negatively and positively, respectively, to positive and negative changes in oil prices in the short run. In the long run, we detect that an increase in oil prices aggravates unemployment significantly, but a fall in oil prices improves unemployment significantly. All our findings prove robust to data of different frequencies (quarterly and yearly) and Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price indices.

Modern economic development is accompanied by the structural transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Since the 18th century, all countries that industrialized successfully have followed their comparative advantages and leveraged the latecomer advantage, including emerging market economies such as the People's Republic of China (PRC), India, and Indonesia. The current view is that Chinese dominance in manufacturing hinders poor countries from developing similar industries. We argue that rising labor cost is causing the PRC to graduate from labor-intensive to more capital-intensive and technology-intensive industries. This will result in the relocation of low-skill manufacturing jobs to other low-wage countries. This process, which we call the “leading dragon phenomenon,” offers an unprecedented opportunity to low-income countries. Such economies can seize this opportunity by attracting the rising outward foreign direct investment flowing from Brazil, the PRC, India, and Indonesia into the manufacturing sectors. All low-income countries can compete for the jobs spillover from the PRC and other emerging economies, but the winner must implement credible economic development strategies that are consistent with its comparative advantage.

This chapter provides an overview of the global food security challenge. It also summarizes the contribution of each of the chapters in the volume and assesses the prospects for attaining food security in the future.