Economic Growth And Environmental Sustainability In Africa

Abstract

The paper examined the impact of economic growth and environmental sustainability in Africa. The study used secondary annual panel data which span the period 2000 to 2024, the panel data was analyzed with the aid of panel autoregressive distributed lag (P/ARDL) or the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator. The variables employed in the study are environmental performance index (EPI) which is the dependent variable, while gross domestic product per capita (GDPPL), population (POPL), degree of trade openness (DTO), institutional quality index (IQI), labour (L), and capital (K), all serve as the independent variables. The outcome of the findings, revealed that in the long run GDPPL was found to have a positive impact on EPI with a coefficient of 0.0007 and in the short run it exhibited an inverse relationship on EPI, although in both period it was found to be insignificant to EPI, with a pvalue of 0.499 and 0.454 respectively. Whereas, in the long run POPL, TDO and K demonstrated a positive impact on EPI, and are all found to be statistically significant. While IQI, and L were found to have a negative impact on EPI in the long run. While in the short run TDO, and IQI exhibited a negative impact and were found to be statistically insignificant to EPI. Furthermore, POPL, L, and K were all having a positive and insignificant effect on EPI in the short run. The paper further put forth the recommendation that government in Africa should prioritize renewable energy adoption and target urban planning, energy efficiency, and governance reforms to amplify long-run benefit while curbing emissions.