Investigation of developmental relationship between west and east African regions using socio-economic indicators

Abstract

Advances in studying the Developmental Relationship that exist between some African countries have necessitated the collection of many variables about Regions. Detection of important variables as predictors and outcomes among them, without applying an appropriate statistical method is a very challenging task. Because of recurrent nature of the Socio-economic Indicators of each regions that are under study. There are usually more than one variable in the outcome set. For the prevention of this problem that causes multi-collinearity, a statistical method named canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is a good solution. In this paper, Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) was applied to socio-economic data of West and East African regions to examine the existence and strengths of relationships between the two regions in terms of their socio-economic development. The results of the analysis revealed that, the strongest correlation of (.9999) is associated with Somalia in East Africa as well as Ghana in West Africa. This is followed by Mauritius and Zambia in East Africa as well as Guinea Bissau and Niger in West Africa. The last strongest correlation of (0.8425) is associated with Burundi, Madagascar and Zimbabwe in East Africa as well as Benin and Gambia in West Africa. The study recommends using the canonical correlation to evaluate socio-economic development between countries. Consequently, the countries associated with such kind of correlations were those countries shared socio- economic indicators for the period under study.