This study examines the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT), infrastructure, and tourism development in Africa between 1996 and 2016 using a dynamic panel gravity model. Our findings show that ICT and infrastructure have a positive, statistically significant relationship with tourism development; as ICT and infrastructure increase, the level of tourist arrivals also increases. This study also identifies relevant factors including bilateral real exchange rate and gross domestic product per capita of the origin countries, suggesting a major role for the variables measured in the region of origin and for those that serve as a comparison between origin and destination. The effect of distance is statistically significant and negative: countries farthest from the origin countries generate less tourism demand, given the higher transportation costs. Repeat tourism (or habit persistence) and natural resources show a significant and positive effect on tourism development. Overall, the empirical results provide evidence that ICT and infrastructural development have opened huge opportunities for growing and strengthening tourism in Africa.

Purpose: The increased adoption of internet-enabled phones in Africa has caused much speculation and optimism concerning its effects on financial inclusion. Policymakers, the media and various studies have all flaunted the potentials of internet and mobile phones for financial inclusion. An important question therefore is “Can the internet and mobile phones spur the inclusion of the financially excluded poor? This study therefore aims to examine the relationship and causality between internet, mobile phones and financial inclusion in Africa for the 2000-2016 period. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis followed these three steps: examination of the stationarity of the variables; testing for the cointegration; and evaluation of the effects of the internet and mobile phones on financial inclusion in Africa for the 2000-2016 period using three outcomes of panel FMOLS approach and Granger causality tests. Findings: The empirical evidence shows that internet and mobile phones have significant positive relationship with financial inclusion, meaning that rising levels of internet and mobile phones are associated with increased financial inclusion. There is also uni-directional causality from internet and mobile phones to financial inclusion, implying that internet and mobile phones cause financial inclusion. The study also shows that macroeconomic factors such as capital formation, primary enrollment, bank credit, broad money, population growth, remittances, agriculture and interest rate, as well as institutional factors such as regulatory quality are important underlying factors for financial inclusion in Africa. Originality/value: In the literature, there is a dearth of research on the internet, mobile phones and financial inclusion, especially in Africa. Most of the related studies are conceptual and micro-based, with little empirical attention to the relationship and causality between internet, mobile phones and financial inclusion. In fact, this dearth of rigorous empirical studies has been attributed as the main cause of inadequate policy guidance in enhancing information communication technologies (Roycroft and Anantho, 2003), despite saturation levels in developed economies. This study fills the gap by evaluating the effects of the Internet and mobile phones on financial inclusion for 44 African countries for the 2000-2016 period.

This study examines the linear and nonlinear effects of mobile phones and internet on tourism in Africa for the period 1996–2017 using system general method of moments which accounts for cross-sectional dependence. The study shows that mobile penetration and internet usage have significant negative effects on tourism while squared mobile penetration and squared internet usage have significant positive effects. The empirical findings are consistent with a non-linear (or quadratic) relationship between mobile penetration, internet usage and tourism, where mobile penetration and internet usage have significant negative relationship with tourism only to a certain point, after which they become a boost for tourism. The causality analyses suggest the existence of uni-directional causality from mobile penetration to tourism and bidirectional causality between squared mobile penetration and tourism. Also, there is bi-directional causality between internet usage, squared internet usage, and tourism. This indicates that mobile penetration and internet usage stimulate tourism which, in turn, boosts internet usage even further in these countries.

The current oil-induced fiscal crisis in Nigeria has, once again, brought the country into the headlines as suffering great economic hardship. As a result, economic diversification is currently at the center of the debate on how Nigeria can improve its economic performance and achieve higher incomes. This discussion, however, has most of the times lacked an explanation of how financial development and financial inclusion can help to drive economic diversification in Nigeria. The literature is scanty in this regard. The objective of this study, therefore, is to contribute to this empirical evidence to the understanding of the impact of financial development and financial inclusion on economic diversification in Nigeria. The data for the study is from CBN Statistical Bulletin and World Development Indicators, for the period 1981 to 2014. It is well-known in the literature that employing the standard OLS techniques on non-stationary data may lead to spurious results. This study, therefore, uses the fully modified least square (FMOLS) which is designed to provide optimal estimates of cointegrating regressions. The results show that financial development has a positive effect on economic diversification, though the effect is not statistically significant. Additionally, financial inclusion, in terms of financial access and financial usage, has positive and significant effects on economic diversification. In other words, financial inclusion has contributed significantly to the diversification of the Nigerian economy. As well, GDP per capita, capital formation, and human capital development have positive and significant effects on economic diversification. FDI has positive effects on economic diversification, though the effects are not significant. On the contrary, exchange rate and trade openness have negative and significant effects on economic diversification. Financial inclusion can, therefore, be seen as a potent accelerator of economic diversification, and can help realize the national objectives of building shared prosperity and abolishing extreme poverty in Nigeria.