The corpus of my thesis centres on economic development, Africa economic growth and econometric. After four and half decade that most African countries have achieved their independences. Africa is the region in the world with the lowest growth of the GDP per capita with dramatic consequences to 900 million inhabitants in 53 countries in the continent. Most of African countries remain mired in economic crisis despite two decade of economic reform. A handful of countries like Botswana, Mauritius, Uganda and North African countries are prospering, but most economies in the regions still have to overcome the fiscal and balance of payment deficits that have undermined economic stability since the first oil crisis in the mid 70s. The severity of these deficits has waxed and waned over the years, but they have never been overcome: Meanwhile, many if not most Africans are poorer today than they were three decades ago. The main objectives of the researches are verifying the majors' issues in which the continent is still facing constraint for his development path. The first essay investigates on trade specialization in four African biggest economies, the so called SANE countries, in order to understand whether the four economies will be able to act as the future engine of African trade, growth, and development To capture the effects of the policies that have been implemented in these countries, from the import substitution to the liberalization strategies, we concentrate our attention on the three digits industries in the manufacturing sectors covering the period from 1975 to 2005. Our main findings reveal that Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, although with some differences, have experienced few changes in their trade patterns and they are still far from a specialization model characterized by a comparative advantage in the most dynamic products. The persistence of natural resource based items those specialized sectors, and the absence of a significant shift towards categories with the highest technological content and the fastest growth in the world demand, reduced the potential gains deriving from the economic integration of the SANE area with the rest of the world, with negative consequences not only for the four countries themselves but also for the rest of the continent. For the second essays, we present two contributions about infrastructure in African countries. In the first part, we investigate the impact of infrastructure on economic growth of African countries, using a panel dataset of all developing countries with different physical infrastructure indicators (kilometre of road, paved road, and railway line; telephone main lines, and kilowatts of electricity generating capacity). The empirical strategy is to estimate a simple equation for the GDP growth augmented to include among the regress or the infrastructure vector as a proxies by (infrastructure indicators or an index of infrastructure stock) in addition to normal standard variable controls. The results support the hypothesis of positive associations between the index of infrastructure and growth rate GDP per capita in African countries, implying that the role of public capital is a useful benchmark for analysing the development of a continent. As a policy implication of the empirical evidences, it is augured that authorities and donors put an effort to increase investment in infrastructures. These indicators seem to be particularly relevant for landlocked countries or post war economies.
Meanwhile in the second part of essay, we deal with the effects of telecommunications on economic growth in African countries. The telecommunications sector became a vital sector during the era of Economic reform that has been characterising the continent. We investigate, empirically, the role of telecommunication infrastructures on long-run Economic growth in African countries, for the period spanning from 1984 to 2005. We use the panel data approach, with a dynamic fixed effect model, which evidences that telecommunications contribute, in a major way, to the economic development of the continent. It is a crucial determinant, as findings indicate a significant and positive correlation between telecommunication infrastructures and regional growth in Africa, after adjusting the research for a number of other factors. Results also show that telecommunications investment is not clearing subject to diminishing returns. Finally in last essay, the aim of the study is to provide new empirical evidence about the determinants of per capita income in African countries, with particular attention to the effects of governance institutional quality and regional integration on income level. We use a sample of 49 countries for the period 1996-2004 and the Generalized Method of Moments Estimation model for dynamic panel, proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991). The results show that African regional group with better institutions, high degree of regional integration cooperation, higher rates of investment in human capital, and lower rate of population growth, shows a level of per capita income higher.
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