Jobs! Electricity shortages and unemployment in Africa

Justice Tei Mensah

Journal of Development Economics, 2024, vol. 167, issue C

Abstract: To what extent does unreliable electricity provision pervasive in many African countries affect job creation in the region? I address this question by assembling household and firm-level data from 29 African countries along with unique project-level data on foreign direct investment (FDI). Leveraging several quasi-experimental approaches, I find that outages have a non-trivial negative impact on employment. The effect is driven by a reduction in employment in non-agricultural sectors and skilled jobs. Unskilled jobs are unaffected by electricity outages. The negative effect of outages on firm entry and the performance of incumbent firms are plausible channels.

Keywords: Electricity outages; Jobs; Employment; Firms; FDI; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 F14 L94 O10 O15 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:167:y:2024:i:c:s0304387823001876

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103231

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