Accounting classification in the era of International Financial Reporting Standards: The case of Africa

This paper presents the first empirical test of a hypothetical classification of financial reporting in Africa based on de facto or actual practices as opposed to de jure rules. Three multivariate techniques (principal component analysis, cluster analysis, and multidimensional scaling) were used to analyze the accounting policies of large, listed companies in Africa that are required by law to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). It was found that there is a dichotomy between the IFRS policy choices of companies in Francophone and Lusophone countries, on the one hand, and those in common law jurisdictions, on the other, thus, confirming the two-group classification schemes proposed by Elad (2015) and Nobes (1983). These findings have important policy implications, particularly in the context of recent recommendations of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that large entities in Africa adopt IFRS.