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    Entrepreneurship, digitalisation and productivity Evidence from sub-Saharan African region
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Edeh, Jude
    Economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has been slow and the region has been struggling to address the mounting challenges, ranging from unemployment to poverty. While research, especially from advanced economies, suggests that entrepreneurship is regarded as a major driver of productivity growth, it is still unclear whether and how entrepreneurship promotes productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper fills the gap by examining the interconnected impact of entrepreneurship and digital infrastructure on productivity, using panel data from Sub-Saharan African countries. The econometric estimates reveal that digital infrastructure has moderating effects on the entrepreneurship—productivity nexus. Thus, these results imply that entrepreneurship does not promote productivity, except through the enabling effect of digital infrastructure. The study provides policy implications for governments and policymakers in the Sub-Saharan African countries.
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    Governance of digital for transformative change in Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Daniels, Chux
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    Governance and Africa's financial development amid sustainable digitalisation
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Ejemeyovwi, Jeremiah O; Osabuohien, Evans S; Bowale, Ebenezer I K
    The technological revolution presents opportunities for financial development in Africa. However, the opportunities need to be supplemented with good governance to ensure efficiency and optimal welfare gains. It is therefore worth investigating whether governance, as well as digitalisation shocks, are crucial for the relatively underdeveloped nature of the financial system of such countries and regions. This study therefore examines the impact of governance and digitalisation shocks on financial development in Africa. Specifically, the study tests out the triple-helix model on five uniquely selected African regional representative countries, namely Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Rwanda and Tunisia for robust and comparative policy estimates. Notably, the study utilised data from the World Development Indicators of the World Bank Group (2023). It adopts the Bayesian Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) empirical modelling to achieve this objective. The technique was utilised after the model stability test was carried out, using the auto-regressive roots test. The impulse response function across Africa is inferred from the model simulation. The study's findings and recommendations contribute to the literature and economic agents (such as multinationals), empirical evidence of the theoretical reflections of digitalisation and governance on financial development in Africa.
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    Platform work in developing economies: Can digitalisation drive structural transformation?
    (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS), 2023-12) Cook, Sarah; Rani, Uma
    This paper discusses the expansion or penetration of digital economic activity in the context of developing economies, and what this may mean for economic or structural transformations for countries in the global South. We ask what possibilities new jobs and forms of work in the digital economy hold – in particular platform work – for the productive transformation of economies in ways that contribute to achieving the goals of human, inclusive and sustainable development. What are the impacts on work and workers in this process? The question of whether a ‘digital transformation’ can spur development and, if so, how and to whose benefit, depends in large part on the nature of employment created, and whether labour can move to higher-productivity sectors which raise incomes while also strengthening the capacity to finance public goods and services, including social protection. This paper provides a synthesis of literature and debates – conceptual, historical and empirical – linking work in the digital economy with ideas of ‘structural transformation’ and development. Our analysis of historical processes of structural transformation and of the conditions of work associated with contemporary digital platforms points to a range of obstacles to development and, in particular, the breakdown of links between skills, productivity, value and wages, limited capacity of states to invest in relevant infrastructure, and the concentration of capital with access to a global supply of labour. We conclude by considering policy actions that would be needed to direct digital economic transformation towards sustainable, fair and inclusive development.
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    Labour market transformations in the era of new technologies: an analysis by regions, gender and industries in Brazil.
    (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS), 2022-11-15) Tessarin, Milene Simone; Morceiro, Paulo Cesar
    The impact of new technologies on the workers is the subject of intense debate. However, a deep analysis of the global South qualifying their regions’ inequality is rarely addressed. We evaluated the Brazilian formal labour market, unpacking disparities according to regions, manufacturing sub-sectors, and gender. First, we created a compatibility table of the occupation list provided by Frey and Osborne (2017) and the Brazilian occupations list to identify the occupations with a higher and lower digitalisation risk. Second, we elaborated a granular view of such occupations using different dimensions (five regions, 23 industries, three technological groups and gender). Third, we analysed the employment change between 2011 and 2019 to promote a comprehensive view of the drop in employment in the past decade. Results showed that most jobs in the Brazilian manufacturing sector are in occupations at high risk of digitalisation but that there is substantial heterogeneity regionally, sub-sectorally, by gender and for all region-gender-sub-sector combinations. The proportion of women workers is smaller than the proportion of men in almost all sub-sectors, but they are concentrated in labour-intensive, low-tech sub-sectors more susceptible to digitalisation. The employment drop between 2011 and 2019 was most significant in occupations with higher digitalisation risk and even more pronounced among women in all regions. Public policies need to be adjusted to the various existing heterogeneities in the global South. It is necessary to explore the synergies between educational, regional, social and science-and-technology policies to balance the impact of new technologies on formal jobs.