Eugene Bempong Nyantakyi

Email: e.bempongnyantakyi@afdb.org


Eugene Bempong NyantakyiEugene Bempong Nyantakyi is Chief Research Economist at the African Development Bank. He is also currently on leave as an Assistant Professor of Global Trade at Oklahoma State University. He also worked as an economist and private sector development specialist at the World Bank Group (WBG). He has also taught economics at West Virginia University and Whitworth University. He holds a PhD in Economics from West Virginia University. His primary research and academic interests are in the areas of global trade and finance, with a secondary focus on entrepreneurship and private sector development in emerging and developing economies. His work has been published in major international economics and entrepreneurship journals as well as in numerous reports of the World Bank Group and African Development Bank.




Papers Published in World Economics:


Enterprise Size Classification in Africa

Comparing enterprise size across countries is a key challenge in international developmentā€”SME definitions used in international development are often criticised as ineffective and a source of mistargeting of international development resources in the private sector. This study applies the International Finance Corporation definition of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), commonly used in international development, and that proposed by Gibson and Van der Vaart (GV) (2008) to a set of enterprises in Africa to determine whether the two definitions capture similar underlying firms and enterprise attributes that practitioners would like to think of as worthy of international development support. The article finds a significant overlap: enterprises classified as SMEs simultaneously by both definitions. Indeed, 57% of firms in the sample qualify as SMEs under the two definitions. SMEs under the GV definition (but not the other) appear to face significant constraints in obtaining access to finance compared to those under the IFC definition (but not the other), and perform poorly in creating jobs relative to those under the IFC definition.

Read Full Paper >