In the Southern African Development Community, the relationships between exchange rate instability, inflation and economic growth remain at the forefront of economic debate because of the historical antecedent and economic clustering of member countries. Nonetheless, much is not known regarding the complexity, complementarity or substitutability of exchange rate instability and inflation on economic growth for SADC countries. This article examined the influence of exchange rate instability on the inflation–growth nexus of the region for the period of 2000 to 2018. Three major techniques of analyses, Pooled Mean Group (PMG), Generalised Moments (GM) and Dynamic Fixed Effect (DFE), were employed in achieving the goal of the study, but the Pooled Mean Group estimator of the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag was favoured by the Hausman test as the main instrument. The GARCH (1, 1) was also employed to generate exchange rate instability. The findings of the study showed that exchange rate instability and inflation have a negative relationship with economic growth of the region. Results further show evidence that economic growth of the region is adversely influenced by the consequential effect of exchange rate instability on inflation: the higher the level of instability in exchange rate, the worse the inflationary-growth relationship of the region. This confirms the menu cost theory of price setting: the higher the rate of inflation, the quicker the exchange rate pass-through effect. It is therefore recommended that policies to ensure appreciation of local currencies should be the priority of member nations.

The importance of human capital formation concept on economic growth cannot be over emphasized and have been the fulcrum of aid and assistance by international agencies and developed countries. Furthermore, evidence from developed countries suggests that human capital has been the major driver of their development process. This notwithstanding, the impact on economic growth in Nigeria has been a subject of debate. Using the Error Correction Model as an analytical tool, this paper examines empirically the relationship between economic growth and human capital development. The study made use of secondary data and examined the time series characteristics of the variables selected, to avoid the problems of spurious correlation often associated with non-stationary time series to concurrently generate long-run equilibrium relationships. In order to achieve linearity, logarithmic calculations were used to examine the variables. Generally, the estimation of the model showed that the variables included in the model provided basic information on the nature of impact on economic growth. Findings also showed that investment in human capital in the form of education and capacity building at the primary and secondary levels impact significantly on economic growth, while capital expenditure on education was insignificant to the growth process. The paper recommends that educational institutions in Nigeria should be restructured for quality schooling at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. In a competitive and globalized economy, this will require strategic planning, increase in capacity utilization by the education sector and rebasing of growth fundamentals.

International migration is growing steadily and has become an inevitable phenomenon on the African continent, Europe, and North America because of economic, social and political challenges. Post-apartheid South Africa, the second largest economy in Africa, instituted a liberal policy which was an opening for thousands of migrants who were in search of protection and better opportunities to come to South Africa. This paper examines the push and pull factors of international migration in South Africa, using Cameroonian and Congolese migrants. Using a qualitative-b a s ed approach, we selected key informants for semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. Our findings suggest that three factors are mainly responsible for international migration. First on the list are economic factors, followed by political factors, and then the influence of migrant networks. In addition to other conventional factors highlighted in literature, two new factors were discovered during the course of the research: aspirations and exposure. As a strong economic bloc, it has become imperative that the South African government address the different challenges that migrants face for better integration, social cohesion, and economic prosperity in the spirit of Ubuntu.

Early marriage denies children childhood experience, endangers their health, and terminates their expectations. In Democratic Republic of Congo, though the 2006 sexual violence law criminalizes child marriages in the country, but the practice of early marriage persists. DRC has one of the uppermost child marriage incidence rates in the world, where nearly seventy-four percent of girls and women between 15 and 19 years of age are married. This paper examined the socio-economic and demographic determinants of early marriage among young women in the DRC. Descriptive and multivariate analyses performed show that young women who faced first sexual intercourse before 16 are 73.5 times more at risk of early marriage more than those who initiated it at the age 18–24. Also, those with no education have a higher risk of early union than their higher educated counterparts. The paper recommends the adoption of a formal sex education framework before first sexual intercourse.

Nigeria has experienced rapidly rising income, non-income inequalities and poverty levels in the last decade, thus raising concerns about the possibility of achieving the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) poverty reduction target. Also, available statistics from a recent survey by the Nigerian Bureau of statistics indicates that inequality and poverty is deep and pervasive with an estimated 70 per cent of the population living in poverty. This scenario posits that the economic growth process in the country itself is not productive and has not created equal opportunity that emphasizes both the creation of and equal access for all. Descriptive analysis using secondary data was used in this paper. The paper x-rays poverty issues in Nigeria and reviewed poverty reduction measures between 2007 and 2012; and identified pertinent issues that could orchestrate MDG targets to a stalemate; they include poor targeting of recipients’ in the previous poverty reduction measures, lack of necessary infrastructure, corruption amongst others. Consequently, meeting the MDG poverty target for 2015 seems like a mirage. The paper therefore suggests that new poverty reduction strategies for Nigeria should be anchored on inclusive growth fundamentals, redistributive public expenditure, increasing rate of productive job creation and a broad based sectoral growth. The paper further recommends that growth should be broad-based, cutting across all sectors and inclusive of the large part of the workforce that poor men and women make up. New strategies should encompass the key elements of benefit incidence amongst the poor population, to support Nigeria’s current development agenda (Transformation Agenda and Vision 20: 2020) significantly; against the fact that the 2015 achievement timeline is doubtful.

Resulting from the incessant political and economic uncertainty that bedevils the EAC region in the recent past, the various governments have used monetary policy changes in response to shocks from macroeconomic variables. However, the available literature shows a non-agreement by scholars as far as the dynamics in monetary policy, external shocks and macroeconomic activity connections are concerned, for both country-by-country analyses and regional assessments. This article widens the frontiers of knowledge about how the dynamics of monetary policy, external shocks and macroeconomic performance interact within the EAC economic region. We adopted the S-VAR method because of its contemporary nature as far as a transmission of monetary policy approach is concerned. The interconnectivity among the countries of EAC is an indication that any shock to the price of commodities (non-oil commodities) has significant implication on the exchange rate, which will be channelled through the supply of money and monetary policy to the GDP. The need to diversify the productive and export base of member countries, compared to the continuous dependence on one or a few products as the major source of income, is hereby advocated.