Governmental financial resilience during pandemics: the case of West Africa

Jacob Agyemang, John Azure, Danson Kimani and Thankom Arun

Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, 2023, vol. 35, issue 3, 385-414

Abstract: Purpose - The paper examines financial resilience responses/capacities of governments from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana in relation to COVID-19. It highlights the governments’ fiscal, budgetary and actions as either anticipatory or coping mechanisms towards the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach - Multiple case studies and secondary data were used, including official government documentation/records, expert views, policy publications by supranational organisations and international financial institutions and media reports. Textual analysis was conducted to evaluate the case countries’ resilience. Findings - The paper highlights how governmental budgetary initiatives, including repurposing the manufacturing sector, can sustain businesses, aid social interventions and reduce vulnerability during health crises. In addition, the paper highlights that external borrowing continues to be indispensable in the financial and budgetary initiatives of the case countries. The paper finds that lessons learnt from the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in West Africa within the last decade have shaped the anticipatory resilience capacities of the case countries against COVID-19. Originality/value - The paper uses the notion of resilience, the dimensions of the resilience framework and the resource-based view (RBV) theory to unearth resilience patterns. This sort of combined approach is new to financial resilience studies.

Keywords: COVID-19; Ebola; Financial resilience; Financial shocks; Ghana; Liberia; Sierra Leone (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jpbafm:jpbafm-03-2021-0063

DOI: 10.1108/JPBAFM-03-2021-0063

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management is currently edited by Dr Giuseppe Grossi

More articles in Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().