Africa's Quest for Sustainable Development: Do Financial Development, Energy Transition, and Digitalization Reinforce Multidimensional Gains?

Liming Huang, Lukman Raimi and Mamdouh Abdulaziz Saleh Al‐Faryan

Sustainable Development, 2025, vol. 33, issue 6, 9444-9465

Abstract: Africa faces a dual challenge: unlocking development potential while mitigating poverty, inequality, and ecological degradation. Although sustainable development has gained traction globally, Africa's pathway remains underexplored—particularly regarding the combined roles of financial development, energy transition, and digitalization. This study investigates how these three drivers influence sustainable development across economic (GDP per capita), environmental (ecological footprint), and social (income inequality) dimensions in 30 African countries from 1997 to 2022. We apply Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) estimation to capture long‐run effects; System Generalized Method of Moments (SYS‐GMM) for short‐run dynamics—re‐estimated with improved diagnostics—and Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) to account for distributional heterogeneity. Oil‐exporting status is incorporated via interaction terms to explore structural divergence. Results show that financial development enhances economic sustainability (β = 1.734, p

Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:33:y:2025:i:6:p:9444-9465

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