African growth and opportunity act (AGOA) and exports of Sub-Saharan African countries to the United States of America: Does credit matter?

The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act was introduced by the United States of America to enable beneficiary countries to boost their export volumes and make way for growth and development. The study aims at estimating the effect of the Act on export from sub-Saharan African countries to the United States of America considering the role of credit. A panel data for 49 countries sourced from IMF DOTS, WDI, and CEPII for the period 1980 to 2020 was employed. Using the GMM, and the differences in differences estimation techniques, the findings showed that the AGOA trade preference has not achieved the purpose for which it was introduced. It is however found that export to the United States can be improved under the trade preference if credit is provided to the private sector. It is therefore recommended that credit accessibility should be made easy to make way for private sector investment in the production process to feed the export sector.

The impact of COVID-19 on stock market performance in Africa: A Bayesian structural time series approach.

This paper evaluates and quantifies the short-term impact of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) on stock market performance in thirteen (13) African countries, using daily time series stock market data spanning 1st October 2019 to 30th June 2020. We employ a novel Bayesian structural time series approach (a state-space model) to estimate the relative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on stock market performance in those countries. Generally, our Bayesian posterior estimates show that, in relative terms, stock market performances in Africa have significantly reduced during and after the occurrence of the COVID-19, usually between -2.7 % and -21 %. At the heterogeneous level, we find that 10 countries have their stock markets significantly and adversely affected by the COVID-19, whereas the remaining 3 countries see no significant impact (or a rather short-lived negative significant impact) of the COVID-19 pandemic on their stock markets. We find that, within our sample period, there is almost no chance that the COVID-19 pandemic would have positive effects on the stock market performance in Africa. Our findings contribute to the discussion and research on the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by providing empirical evidence that the pandemic has restrictive effects on stock market performance in African economies.