Title: Corporate governance practices as a reflection of the institutions, economics and political environment in Sub-Saharan Africa Anglophone countries

Authors: Adeoye Amuda Afolabi; Aida Sy

Addresses: Department of Economic and Management Studies, School of Social and Management Sciences Afe Babalola University, PMB 5454 Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria ' Critical Accounting Projects Inc., New-York, USA

Abstract: This paper reviews the historical background of corporate governance, emerging issues in the development and practice of corporate governance in Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. It compared the corporate governance institutions, politics, corruption and economics of each country. We find that in Ghana there are lacks of institutional shareholders, while in Nigeria and South Africa there are institutional shareholders. However, shareholders association in Ghana and South Africa are not active compared with that of Nigeria. In addition, South Africa have a stronger institutional framework than Ghana and Nigeria, this really provide an evidence to show that corporate governance practices in South Africa seems to be better than Ghana and Nigeria. Generally, we find that corruption and bribery, politics, economics influence effective corporate governance practice in each country. We recommend that the socio-political and economic culture in Sub-Saharan Africa Anglophone in particular Nigeria and Ghana requires need for urgent re-orientation in order to restructure the National Institutions of each of the country. As a result, corporate governance guideline should be tailor towards the political economic and cultural environment of those countries.

Keywords: institutional framework; politics; corruption; economics; ownership structure; corporate governance; political environment; Sub-Saharan Africa; SSA; Ghana; Nigeria; South Africa; culture; institutional shareholders; shareholder associations; bribery.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCA.2016.081613

International Journal of Critical Accounting, 2016 Vol.8 No.5/6, pp.417 - 432

Received: 13 Mar 2015
Accepted: 13 Mar 2015
Published online: 18 Jan 2017 *

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