Remittances, ICT and doing business in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how linkages between information and communication technology (ICT) and remittances affect the doing of business.

Design/methodology/approach

The focus is on a panel of 49 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2000–2012. The empirical evidence is based on the generalized method of moments.

Findings

While the authors establish some appealing results in terms of net negative effects on constraints to the doing of business (i.e. time to start a business and time to pay taxes), some positive net effects are also apparent (i.e. number of start-up procedures, time to build a warehouse and time to register a property). The authors also establish ICT penetration thresholds at which the unconditional effect of remittances can be changed from positive to negative, notably: for the number of start-up procedures, an internet level of 9.00 penetration per 100 people is required, while for the time to build a warehouse, a mobile phone penetration level of 32.33 penetration per 100 people is essential. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to assess linkages between ICT, remittances and doing business in SSA.

Citation

Asongu, S., Biekpe, N. and Tchamyou, V. (2019), "Remittances, ICT and doing business in Sub-Saharan Africa", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 46 No. 1, pp. 35-54. https://doi.org/10.1108/JES-06-2017-0146