DIASPORAN ECONOMIC STRENGTH AND COVID-19: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SELECTED AFRICAN ECONOMIES

The COVID-19 pandemic has had unparalleled consequences, fundamentally altering the fabric of our global communities and economies. To this end, the primary goal of this study was to investigate how this global health crisis affected economic activities in overseas countries and, consequently, its effects on remittance inflows into selected African countries while applying a rigorous analytical method to examine the relationships between COVID-19 and remittance inflow. This study investigated the impact of the pandemic on remittance inflows to South Africa and Nigeria, which has restricted economic activities in overseas countries, leading to a need to examine its effects on remittance inflows into selected African countries. This study used the robust econometric technique of autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) on panel data to analyze the pandemic‟s implications in the two economies. The results revealed that COVID-19 had a negative relationship with remittance inflow during the review period, but it was not statistically significant in Nigeria, whereas it was positively and statistically correlated with remittance inflow in South Africa. However, the study offers policy recommendations emphasizing global governance and regional cooperation to improve the economic status of African countries.