The main objective of the study was to investigate the impact of microfinance on smallholder resettled sugarcane farmers’ productivity and technical efficiency. The study evaluated the impact of microfinance on technical efficiency of resettled sugarcane smallholders as well as the determinants of their technical efficiency. The study used Transcendental Logarithmic (Translog) Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Data from a household level survey of 2018 was collected using questionnaires in a multi-stage sampling technique. The hypothesis tests confirmed the adequacy of Translog SFA frontier over Cobb–Douglas together with the appropriateness of SFA over OLS. The results revealed that both microfinance and intensity of participation significantly improve technical efficiency. Extension services, secondary education, tertiary education, experience, and farming assets were among statistically significant determinants of observed variation in technical efficiency. Estimated technical efficiency scores from the truncated normal distribution model with heteroscedasticity and exogenous determinants were on average 64.4% and 33.6% for treatment and control groups, respectively. Bank participants were more efficient (65.4%) than MFIs participants (63.3%). The results confirmed that microfinance promote efficient utilization of agricultural inputs. Policy suggestions include expansion and sufficient disbursement of microfinance.

The use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) forms a significant component of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). This study examined the impact of ICT on agricultural development in South Africa utilizing time series data from 1995 to 2022. Agricultural development was measured through agricultural output and agriculture total factor productivity as dependent variables. Traditional factors of production (land, labor, and capital) together with ICT variables (mobile cellphone subscriptions, Internet usage, and fixed telephone subscriptions) were used. Additional variables such as inflation, human development, access to energy and climate change were used. Data analysis was performed using the ARDL approach. The findings revealed that mobile phone subscriptions and Internet usage positively affect agricultural output and ATFP in the short and long run despite having a negative effect through the second lag in the short run. Fixed telephone subscriptions negatively affect ATFP in the long run while affecting output negatively in the short run through the first lag. Land, human development index, access to energy, and capital generally exhibited an increasing effect on both agricultural output and ATFP both in the short and long run through the various models estimated. Climate change and inflation were generally found to affect both agricultural output and ATFP negatively in the short and long run. The study concluded that ICT plays a significant role in promoting agricultural output and total factor productivity growth. Recommendations included that the South African government should promote the digitalization of the agriculture sector through the provision of ICT infrastructure that can be utilized by both smallholder farmers and large-scale agricultural producers.

Despite the MFI insurgency, agricultural financing remains critically low, even though microcredit is widely accepted as both a substitute and compliment to formal credit. Zimbabwe is an agro-based economy and very little is known about the determinants of microcredit demand and microcredit size in smallholder resettled sugarcane farmers. Research is concentrated in short-term agriculture activities. Thus, this study aims to fill the unattended gap in lagged returns agriculture activities such as sugarcane production which takes at least a year to mature, hence, the greater need for agriculture financing alternatives such as microfinance. The study examined the determinants of both microcredit demand and loan size (magnitude of microcredit participation) by smallholder resettled A2 sugarcane farmers in Chiredzi. Primary data from 370 smallholder resettled sugarcane farmers (214 borrower participants and 156 non-borrower participants) were used. Probit and Tobit regression models were used for data analysis in STATA. Operational costs, interest rate, grace period, and land size significantly affect both the demand for microcredit and microcredit size, while education, household farming assets, extension services, and payback period significantly affect microfinance demand, and risk attitude/perception additionally determine microcredit size. Special microfinance schemes best suitable for the agriculture sector and crop/plant-specific agriculture financing schemes, currency, and macroeconomic stability are the major policy recommendations.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a management concept that enables companies to incorporate social and environmental concerns into their business operations and stakeholder interactions. Standardized reporting methods have been employed to give stakeholders a clearer understanding of the sustainability objectives and initiatives of businesses. Reporting on sustainability initiatives is now guided by several guidelines, including the United Nations (UN) Global Compact. This study assessed the determinants of sustainability reporting by resource-based companies listed on the two stock exchanges in Zimbabwe. The research objectives were to assess the evolution of sustainability reporting among resource-based companies and evaluate its drivers using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 standards. Data was collected from the annual audited reports of the companies over a period of five years. The study showed that there was an increase in sustainability reporting from 2018 to 2022. The correlation between sustainability reporting and profitability, sales, firm size, and capitalisation revealed weak to moderate relationships. The Tobit regression results show that sustainability reporting is driven by firm size, capitalisation, and sales. There is a need for improved firm size, capitalisation, and sales to improve the sustainability reporting by the resource-based firms in Zimbabwe.

Exchange rate volatility has emerged to be one of the most critical determinants of price stability for countries operating in multicurrency systems with their own currency in the basket of currencies. This study empirically examined the impact of exchange rates (official and parallel market rates) on inflation in Zimbabwe during the multicurrency system for the period 2014 to 2024, together with comparing the impacts of the official and parallel market exchange rates on inflation. Time series and monthly data were used to examine the short and long run impact of exchange rates on inflation in an ARDL estimation framework. Findings revealed a short run and long run positive relationship between both the official and parallel market exchange rates and inflation, with the parallel market exchange rate being the most significant variable. Other control variables used, such as domestic productivity, have a highly significant negative impact on inflation through the official and parallel exchange rate models in both the short and the long run. Money supply, real interest rate, trade balance, foreign prices, foreign output, stock market prices and foreign currency reserves have varied impacts through either the official or parallel market exchange rate models. Policy recommendations include a contractionary Monetary and expansionary Fiscal policy mix that will result in exchange rate appreciation and stability, productivity growth, trade surplus, growth in reserves, and ultimately low prices. The exchange rate policy recommended in this study is to shelve discard the local currency in the multicurrency system until industrial capacity utilization exceeds 50% to add the local currency to the basket of currencies and 75% for mono-local currency (de-dollarization).

The relationship between bank credit and economic growth has been subject to extensive empirical research. This study applied a vector autoregressive (VAR) approach to examine the relationship between bank credit and economic growth in South Africa based on three separate periods: pre-crisis (2001–2008), post-crisis (2009–2016), and the combined period. The findings suggested two-way causality between bank credit and economic growth in the post-crisis period; however, the combined sample found evidence of unidirectional causality in support of a demand-leading hypothesis. Bank credit was found to have a positive and statistically significant relationship with the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate in the pre-crisis period, concurring with Miftari (2023) that the financial system is the crucial supporter of economic growth (economic activities). However, following the events of the financial crisis, both the post-crisis and combined samples revealed that bank credit had a negative influence on economic growth, and this confirms to Koutima-Banzouzi et al. (2024) and Tchouassi and Tomo (2022). Since the financial crisis, the South African economy has been plagued by many issues that have resulted in non-existent economic growth for some time, which, to some extent, has limited banks’ credit ability to positively influence economic growth in South Africa.