Financial Integration, Exchange Rate Regimes and Economic Growth

African financial systems are inefficient and their performances are uneven, something which raises concerns about their values and utilities for the economies. The main objective of study was to empirically examine the extent to which financial development, financial integration and exchange rate regime (ERR) positively influence economic performance within the dynamics context of African countries using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model. There is a shortage of publications on the effects of these variables on economic growth in developing countries in general and particularly in Africa. The study aims at filling the gap by providing empirical evidence gathered from various countries in Africa. This was done by constructing two panel data sets of African countries consisting of various explanatory variables (financial development, financial integration, trade openness, macro-economy, institutional) that span the period 1980 to 2015. We proxy the financial development by two separate indicators (stock market capitalization over GDP and credit to private sector over GDP).