Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

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Browsing Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs) by SDG "SDG-10: Reduced inequalities"

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    An intersectionality of race and ethnicity: the glass ceiling in the banking sector in Kenya and South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2021-12) Genga,Cheryl Akinyi Margaret
    Even though progress has been made in the Kenyan and South African banking sector, Black African women remain a minority in Top Executive leadership positions. Previous research on the “glass ceiling” focuses on Black African women as one homogenous group not acknowledging the diversity dimensions of Black African women from Africa. Invisible factors such as race and ethnicity have been stated to contribute to the glass ceiling in the banking sector, yet this has not been investigated making Black African women more invisible. This research primarily aims to provide an understanding of the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and career advancement of Black African women in the Kenyan and South African banking sector. This research further aims: to describe the obstacles that Black African women still face, to analyse the diversity of Black African women in management, to identify the reasons as to why some Black African women have been able to crack the glass ceiling in the Kenyan and South African banking sector and to give recommendations to stakeholders as to how they can help crack the glass ceiling for Black African women in the Kenyan and South African banking sector. To address the research objectives, this research applied a qualitative Intercatergorical Intersectionality Approach to provide an understanding of the relationship between race, ethnicity, and gender in the Kenyan and South African banking sector. This was facilitated by the use of semi-structured in-depth interviews and focus groups that were carried out with the participants being Black African women managers in the Kenyan and South African banking sector in Nairobi and Johannesburg, respectively. Data collected from the interviews were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis in which themes and patterns were identified to address the research objectives. Firstly, findings from the research illustrated a relationship between race, ethnicity, and gender. The extent of the relationship between race, ethnicity, and gender was discussed by the role of race, the role of ethnicity, the intersectionality of race and gender, and the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and gender in the career advancement of Black African women in the Kenyan and South African banking sector. Secondly, the findings identified the obstacles that Black African women still face in the banking sector, which were discussed and described into three groups: Black African women are their own worst enemies in the banking sector. Thirdly, the findings illustrated the diversity dimensions of Black African women managers from the Kenyan and South African banking sector in relation to their race, ethnicity, and the positions that they held in the banks they were working for. Fourthly, the findings highlighted reasons as to why some Black African women managers had cracked the glass ceiling (discussed with the use of the glass ceiling scale). Fifthly, the findings recommend that stakeholders have to be fully committed if they want to help Black African women crack the glass ceiling in the Kenyan and South African banking sector. In conclusion, through the findings, this research provides a conceptual framework to understand the glass ceiling in relation to the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and gender of Black African women in the Kenyan and South African banking sector.
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    Infrastructure financing and bond markets development in sub-Saharan Africa
    (2022) Mukoki, Paul Shepherd
    This thesis explores how domestic public debt (bond) markets can be developed into viable mechanisms for closing the infrastructure funding gap existing in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region. The infrastructure deficit in the SSA region is colossal and an impediment to its economic growth. To narrow the large deficits, Africa needs to bridge its infrastructure financing gap, estimated at US$62 billion annually until 2025. On the other hand, domestic public debt markets are seen as a potential funding source for filling this huge financing gap, but they are not considered well-developed. We first examined the relationship between bond markets development and the infrastructure gap in Sub-Saharan Africa. We employed the panel threshold regression (PTR) model on 40 countries covering 2003-2018 and documented a non-linear (single-triple) relationship between public debt market development and the infrastructure gap. We established that many of the fledgling government and corporate bond markets play a complementary role in the financing of infrastructure; and interestingly, with corporate public debt markets eliciting a greater reduction in the infrastructure financing gap than government public debt markets. We then used a cross-country survey approach on 8 SSA countries and nonparametric inferential statistics to investigate, first, the state of the public bond markets in SSA and, second, the ways by which their liquidity can be improved so that infrastructure investment can be enabled. The major conclusions from these survey results are: First, government yield curves do not provide a reliable benchmark for corporate bonds. Second, the government bond markets, which are expected to offer foundational mechanisms for establishing robust and effective yield curves, have remained underdeveloped. Commercial banks remain the predominant investorsin government bond markets, followed by nonbank financial institutions, and a few foreign investors, in that order. Third, except for South Africa, only 38% of the corporate bond markets in SSA are moderately developed; the rest are either developing (25%) or nascent (25%). Fourth, pension funds in many SSA countries have somewhat reformed to engage in infrastructure financing, though within statutory limits. Fifth, liquidity in government bond and corporate bond markets is relatively low in many countries, which in turn, limits infrastructure financing. Finally, we found that sophisticated financial instruments could facilitate infrastructure financing by deepening and fostering liquidity in domestic public debt markets. These instruments include infrastructure project bonds, diaspora bonds, green bonds, and vi securitised debt assets. An important part of this initiative involves increasing the sale of stateowned enterprise bonds and municipal bonds backed by guarantees from the government. The overall results show that the public debt markets in many of the surveyed SSA countries are underdeveloped and cannot significantly plug the infrastructure financing gap in the region unless substantial capital (especially public debt) markets growth and/or development are embarked upon.