The study examined the effect of CEO characteristics of tenure, nationality, gender and share ownership on the dividend paid by sixty-four companies located in Sub-Saharan Africa. It used data for five years (from 2012 to 2016) and covered three Sub-Saharan African countries. Twenty companies were selected from the sixty-five listed on the Kenyan Stock Exchange; twenty-three from the one hundred and seventy-two on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and twenty-one of the three hundred and seventy-six companies listed on Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Kruskal Wallis was applied to test four hypotheses. Two CEO characteristics – nationality and share ownership – were found to have significant relationship to dividend payout in the data available for the study.
Keywords: CEO gender, CEO nationality, CEO share ownership, CEO tenure, Dividend payout, sub-Saharan Africa
