Most of the literature that explored the relationship between financial development and economic growth taking into consideration the roles played by institutional quality in the ECOWAS region still debates on the roles of institutional quality on economic growth. This study used data from 1996-2017 for 15 emerging economies within the ECOWAS by applying two-step SYS GMM (SGMM) estimators. The following conclusions were developed: first, the study discovered that financial development has no significant and positive impact on economic growth in the ECOWAS region. Secondly, regulatory quality and control of corruption, which are considered as institutional quality variables, have opposing results with control of corruption reducing growth as well as regulatory quality variable increasing growth. Again, the results indicate that capital formation has a positive association with growth and labor force influencing growth negatively. Finally, due to a lack of proper corruption control systems in the region and poor financial sector development, growth cannot improve.

The study investigates the impact of institutional quality on environmental efficiency in the presence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) using data on desirable and undesirable outputs as well as institutional quality dimensions from the World Governance Indicators (WGI) for 19 Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries over an annual period from 2005 to 2014. Environmental efficiency was low in eight SSA countries and excellent in eleven others, according to the efficiency results. Two countries had the highest average environmental efficiency over the first period, while one had the lowest. In 2013, the majority of SSA countries had high efficiency indexes, with one country having an index of 2.098 and four countries having efficiency rates of one. After controlling for industrialization, energy consumption, and population variables, the results show that corruption control and regulatory quality lower environmental efficiency while government effectiveness increases. The DH causality test revealed that environmental efficiency, control of corruption, regulatory quality, energy consumption, and population had no causal relationship. There are also one-way causal linkages between environmental efficiency and government effectiveness and industrialization.

Objective: The purpose of the study is to indicate how foreign investment impact on economic growth in some selected African economies.Research Design & Methods: The study employed the Panel ARDL (PMG) technique to estimate the impact of foreign investment proxy as FDI net inflows on Growth measured as GDP per capita.Findings: The results of Panel ARDL indicate that foreign investment has a positive impact on economic growth as well as a positive sign of trade openness, inflation, and labor. The study stresses that for increasing economic growth there is a need to seek more foreign investments, increase trade openness and inflation at the same time improve upon employment conditions in selected African developing countries.Contribution & Value Added: The novelty of this research is in presenting and emphasizing the significance of FDI in some selected African countries on economic growth.