The poor performance of female entrepreneurs, exemplified in their inability to realize their full potential and compete fairly with their male counterparts owing to financial illiteracy, motivated this study. Therefore, this study examined the effect of financial literacy on business performance among female micro-entrepreneurs. Using the survey research design, data were collected from 247 female entrepreneurs from six states in the North-Eastern region of Nigeria. The hypotheses developed for the study were tested using path modeling-structural equation modeling with the aid of SmartPLS software version 3.2.7. The result revealed that all proxies of financial literacy (financial education, cash forecasting, and bookkeeping have significant effects on business performance of female entrepreneurs. Additionally, the paper revealed that financial education contributed more to the variance in business performance of the female micro-entrepreneurs, this was followed by bookkeeping practices, while cash-forecasting has the least effect on the variance in business performance. This implies that financial education is essential for the success of female micro-entrepreneurs. Thus, this study advocates the need for continuing trainings and workshops for female micro-entrepreneurs on financial concepts such as bookkeeping, cash forecasting, and market volatilities.

Background: Research on organizational justice in hospitals in African countries are limited despite being important for workforce performance and hospital operational efficiency. This paper investigated perceptions and predictors of organizational justice among health professionals in academic hospitals in South-east Nigeria.Methods: The study was conducted in two teaching hospitals in Enugu State, South-east Nigeria using mixed-methods design. Randomly sampled 360 health professionals (doctors = 105, nurses = 200 and allied health professionals, AHPs = 55) completed an organizational justice scale. Additionally, semi-structured, in-depth interview with purposively selected 18 health professionals were conducted. Univariate and bivariate statistics and multivariable linear regression were used to analyze quantitative data. Statistical significance was set at alpha 0.05 level. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically using NVivo 11 software.Results: The findings revealed moderate to high perception of different dimensions of organizational justice. Doctors showed the highest perception, whereas AHPs had the least perception. Among doctors, age and education predicted distributive justice (adjusted R² = 22%); hospital ownership and education predicted procedural justice (adjusted R² = 17%); and hospital ownership predicted interactional justice (adjusted R² = 42%). Among nurses, age, gender and marital status predicted distributive justice (adjusted R² = 41%); hospital ownership, age and gender predicted procedural justice (adjusted R² = 28%); and hospital ownership, age, marital status and tenure predicted interactional justice (R² = 35%). Among AHPs, marital status predicted distributive justice (adjusted R² = 5%), while hospital ownership and tenure predicted interactional justice (adjusted R² = 15%). Qualitative findings indicate that nurses and AHPs perceive as unfair, differences in pay, access to hospital resources, training, work schedule, participation in decision-making and enforcement of policies between doctors and other health professionals due to medical dominance. Overall, supervisors have a culture of limited information sharing with, and disrespectful treatment of, their junior colleagues.Conclusion: Perceptions of organizational justice range from moderate to high and predictors vary among different healthcare professionals. Addressing specific socio-demographic factors that significantly influenced perceptions of organizational justice among different categories of health professionals and departure from physician-centered culture would improve perceptions of organizational justice among health professionals in Nigeria and similar settings.

The performances of African countries particularly in West African Sub-region on global-human development indices had been abysmal over the years and have worsened in the face of COVID-19 pandemic. This is a source of concern to scholars. Expenditure on health and education are recognized by experts as key predictors of human capital development. The latter is theoretically adjudged as a major driver of socio-economic development. This study investigated the relationship between health financing and economic performance (proxied by per capita GDP) among the 15 member countries of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Data spanning the period 1985-2017 were used and Panel Autoregressive Distributive Lag (PARDL) technique was adopted for the analysis. Results show that both private and public expenditures on healthcare were statistically significant to grow output per capita in the long-run. Further findings also suggest that other socio-economic covariates that affected the outcome of aggregate economic performance like price level of capital formation and population growth rate implicitly affected output per capita in the Sub-region. Recommendation points to all critical stakeholders to show more commitment and allocate more resources towards improved health care in the Sub-region if the cycle of stunted economic development will be broken.

Investigations on industrial parks appear to be slim with inadequate statistical data in spite of their growing connectedness with sustainability and the importance of their establishment. They were required to curb the overarching challenges of small and medium-scaled ventures (SMVs). To revert the status quo and justify the call for the timeliness of empiricism in this regard, the study investigated the extent to which industrial parks (IPs) impact the sustainability of SMVs. Specifically, it hypothesizes that competition among IP firms affects innovativeness and that government tax incentives impact the cost efficiency of SMVs in Enugu State in Nigeria. Empirical data for the study’s analyses were gathered from the distributive trade, manufacturing, agriculture and allied products, and commerce and tourism sub-sectors of SMVs in the Enugu metropolis, Enugu State, Nigeria. Adopting a descriptive survey design, 711 staff members from the aforementioned SMV sub-sectors in Enugu State, Nigeria were included as the research population. The regression analytics tool was used to analyze the data, following collection, using a structured questionnaire. The study’s results indicate that competition had a significant positive impact on SMVs’ innovativeness in the Enugu metropolis (R = 0.575, β = 0.283, t = 6.794, p = 0.000 < 0.05), while the government’s tax incentive had a significant positive impact on SMVs’ cost-effectiveness (R = 0.267, β = 0.213, t = 6.472, p = 0.000 < 0.05). Therefore, the study concluded that the pursuit of sustainability stimulated competition, resulting in higher levels of innovativeness, while government support in the form of tax incentives helped to lower SMVs’ costs of operating in the parks. As a result, SMVs can maintain viability through a well-planned structure of the industrial park.