CPI inflation in Africa: fractional persistence, mean reversion and nonlinearity

Price stability has been one of the key mandates that apex monetary authorities strive to achieve globally. While most developed economies have achieved single digit inflation rates, most developing economies, especially African countries still experience alarming double-digit inflation rates. This paper therefore examined the dynamics of inflation in sixteen African countries. We employed the fractional persistence framework with linear trend and non-linear specifications based on Chebyshev's polynomial in time. The results indicated nonlinear time trend in inflation for most of the countries. With the exception of Burkina Faso, which exhibited plausibility of naturally reverting to its mean level, the majority of the selected African countries would require stronger interventions to revert their observed inflationary levels to their mean levels