Development of the agricultural sector can numerously gift the economy by ensuring food security and rural livelihoods, fostering economic growth, reducing poverty, promoting social stability, and achieving sustainable development goals. But agricultural activities especially in Sub-Saharan Africa are faced with numerous challenges like lack of required credits to the farmers, unavailability of needed energy for powering the farm machinery and transportation of farm produce, and fluctuation of crude oil prices which serve as the main source of energy in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the sequel to these highlighted challenges that face agricultural activities, this study examines the impact of credit channels, energy production, and oil revenue on agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa using an annual time series covering 21 years (2001-2021) drawn from selected sub-Saharan African countries under study. Using the panel autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) as the baseline model and the generalized method of moment (GMM) as the robustness check, we made the following findings. From the ARDL perspective, we found that credit channels have a negative impact on agricultural development. In contrast, energy production and oil revenue have positive and negative significant impacts on the agricultural development of sub-Saharan Africa. Further, results of the Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) revealed that while credit channels have both negative and positive long-run relationships with agricultural development, energy production, and oil revenues have positive and significant long-run relationships with agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa. The study concludes that credit channels have both negative and positive long-run relationships with agricultural development. In contrast, energy production and oil revenue have negative and significant long-run relationships with agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa. We recommended effective agricultural credit provision and a mechanized farming system to increase the quality and quantity of food supplies in sub-Saharan Africa.

Background This study seeks to examine the causal link between financial deepening, national security, ecological footprint, and economic growth in Nigeria, in order to contribute to the contradicting evidence on economic growth drivers. Methods The dynamic ARDL model was employed as the baseline model to establish the link between the phenomena, and the FMOLS and DOLS as robust models using time series data spanning from 1995 to 2022. The FMOLS and DOLS models take into consideration the presence of endogeneity, cross-sectional dependency, and heterogeneity. Results The results demonstrate that whereas ecological footprint has positive and significant long-term relationships with economic growth, financial deepening and national security have negative and significant long-run relationships with economic growth. There was a 34% and 50% correction to the short-term to long-term adjustment speed, respectively. The findings of the Granger causality, interaction terms, marginal (ME), and threshold (TH) effects demonstrate: a) a significant bidirectional causal relationship between national security and economic growth, as well as a one-way significant causal link between financial deepening and economic growth; b) changes in national security and ecological footprint have a significant and negative impact on the financial deepening effect on economic growth; c) significant negative and marginal effects of national security on economic growth, as well as significant positive marginal effects of ecological footprints on economic growth; and d) the impact of financial deepening on economic growth becomes apparent when the increases in the marginal effect of the ecological footprint reach a critical limit over the ( TH CO 2 = 0.981) threshold. Conclusions This study highlights the significant link between Nigeria’s financial deepening, national security, ecological footprint, and economic growth. It recommends that viable policies be put in place to support the development of financial institutions, increasing security infrastructure investment, and promoting renewable energy use for sustainable environment and reduced carbon emissions.

On a global scale, technological innovations have achieved great success in the process of economic development of national economies, especially in the banking sector. Technological innovation is largely used by the banking sector to create competitive intelligence and competitive advantage, as it helps banks improve their services and cost efficiency, as fewer employees and fewer traditional branches are needed. However, this current study focused on examining the impact of technological innovation on bank performance in 40 emerging markets from 2000 to 2021. Findings from the correlation results show that there are strong positive correlations between technological innovation and bank performance in emerging markets. Similarly, we also find the existence of cointegration between technological innovation and bank performance and the existence of a long-run relationship between technological innovation and bank performance in emerging markets, as implied by the results of tied tests. Our study also found from ARDL and GMM results that there are long-term significant relationships between technological innovation and emerging market bank performance. After making these discoveries, we recommended policies such as improving the technology hub of emerging markets and extending banking services to emerging markets' underbanked populations living in remote areas using technology tools to improve bank performance in emerging markets.

This study assesses the connection between environmental degradation, agro-climate financing, and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using yearly time series data from 2000 to 2022. The system generalized method of moments (GMM) was employed to tackle endogeneity issues, with robustness checks performed using DOLS and FMOLS to address cross-sectional dependence through robust standard errors. This method revealed important insights into the dynamics of economic growth. The findings show a significant positive connection between the economy’s past success and its current growth. CO₂ emissions negatively impact economic growth, demonstrating the detrimental effects of environmental degradation. Agricultural finance has a positive influence on economic growth by boosting productivity and fostering economic growth. However, climate financing has a short-term negative impact on growth owing to high initial costs and inefficiencies, but it promotes long-term growth when combined with agricultural finance. The interaction between CO₂ emissions and agricultural finance shows that increasing emissions reduces the benefits of agricultural investments, underscoring the vulnerability of agriculture-dependent economies. Conversely, the interaction of agricultural finance with climate finance enhances economic growth, demonstrating the relevance of combining climate and agricultural investments. Additionally, the study finds that exchange rate stability positively affects growth, while inflation has a negative impact. Robustness checks validate these findings and underscore the need for varied analytical methods to capture economic interactions comprehensively. The study recommends comprehensive policy measures to tackle environmental, agricultural, and climate challenges, promote sustainable growth, and leverage integrated financial solutions for long-term development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This study explores the relationship between microfinance, financial inclusion, and economic welfare in a sample of 23 African countries for the period of 2004 to 2023 using annual time series data. We measured microfinance with the number of Branches of Microfinance banks, Microfinance Borrowers, Microfinance outstanding deposits, Microfinance outstanding loans; financial inclusion number of registered mobile money accounts per 1,000 adults; the number of mobile money agent outlets par 1,000 adults; and digital card ownership; governance and institutional quality with Rule of law, regulatory quality, and government effectiveness; and economic welfare with household consumption; while we controlled for the inflation rate, interest rate and exchange rate. These variables were estimated using Panel Least Squares, Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS), Dynamic OLS (DOLS), and Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) estimation techniques. The result of the cointegration revealed that cointegration exists between the variables of the model. Findings from the aforesaid estimation techniques show that there is the existence of long-run relationships between microfinance, financial inclusion, and economic welfare since the coefficients of the microfinance and financial inclusion variables are statistically significant. The coefficients of the error correction terms which measure the effects of the short-run dynamics of the model suggest that the speeds of adjustment from the long run to the short run in the models would be 76%, 61%, 83%, 67%, 68%, 34%, and 80% respectively for all the specified models. Following the findings of the study, conclusions were drawn and the study suggests that microfinance institutions should adapt to the digitization of their products and services for wider coverage on one hand; the government should provide digital financial amenities to create a fertile ground for micro-financial institutions to rely on to maximize the welfare of the economy.