Papers are invited from academics, policy makers as well as practitioners in business and industry for a conference on the theme of 'Business Finance in Africa' to be held at University of Glamorgan on April 21-22, 2001. Some of the interesting ideas include (but are by no means limited to):

patterns of business financing in Africa
capital structure issues in Africa
agency theory and business finance in Africa
financing policy and business ownership in Africa
dividend policy in African business/firms
microstructure of African stock markets
banks versus stock markets in Africa
the banking market in Africa
investment and risk management in Africa
scope for insurance in African business
tax shields and business finance in Africa
fiscal policy/monetary policy/ exchange rate policy and business finance in Africa
financial liberalisation and business finance patterns in Africa
capital flight of business finance in Africa
aid, tax effort and private sector investment in Africa
government spending and private sector investment in Africa
A selection of papers from the conference will be published in a Special Issue of the Journal of African Business under the guest editorship of Dr Atsede Woldie, the University of Glamorgan, and Professor Victor Murinde, the University of Birmingham. The usual refereeing procedures will be used to screen papers from those presented (and those submitted but not presented) at the two-day conference. We aim to assemble papers which hang well together but which also offer diverse approaches to the analysis of the main issues and policies relating to the theme of business finance in Africa. In all, we expect to publish 13 papers (each of about 9,000 words maximum) in the Special Issue of the Journal.

In terms of the timescale, it is intended to obeserve the following deadlines:

31st December 2000: Deadline for presenting abstract or outline of the paper (not more than 300 words) for the conference. Papers for presentation at the conference will be accepted on the basis of these abstracts.

1st March 2001: Deadline for submission of complete papers for the conference. Papers will be blind-refereed during March and April and comments will be made available at the conference.

31st July 2001 (Post-conference): Submission of accepted papers for the Special Issue of the Journal of African Business i.e. authors of accepted papers will have a very short time to incorprate the referee's comments as well as comments of conference particiapnts.

The Special Issue [editor: Sam.Okoroafo@UToledo.edu] will appear as Vol.3 No.1 2002