EFFECT OF PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE ON ECONOMIC PRODUCTIVITY IN SELECTED AFRICAN COUNTRIES
- Nosakhare Liberty Arodoye
- ( paper pages. 365 - 393 )
Abstract
The absence of public
infrastructure (such as electricity, transportation, ICT, water, and sanitation)
and resilient institutions has been the critical reason for the inability of
many African countries (Nigeria inclusive) to unlock their respective
productivity gains in the last five decades. Based on extensive and relevant
literature reviewed, this study investigated the impact of public infrastructure
and other control variables (such as natural resource rents, human capital, and
population growth) on economic productivity in thirty selected African countries
for the period from 2005 to 2019, employing the generalized method of moments (GMM)
and auto regressive distributed lag (ARDL) as baseline methodologies, and the fully
modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and the forecast error variance
decomposition (FEVD) – a variant of the vector autoregressive (VAR) model and vector
error correction mechanism (VECM) for robustness checks. The estimation results
from the various methodologies revealed that public infrastructure, governance
factors, human capital, and natural resource rents have a positive and
significant impact on economic productivity, and this supports the consensus
view in a myriad of economic literature reviewed. However, the impact of population
growth exerts a negative influence. Arising from the aforesaid findings, this
study recommends that governments of African countries should: improve the
quality of spending on public infrastructure to further boost economic
productivity; provide favourable institutional and political environments for
the economy to thrive; build more resilient human capital to stimulate stronger
productivity growth; and discourage population growth in the region by
instituting deliberate population control policies.
Citation
Nosakhare Liberty Arodoye.
2023.
"EFFECT OF PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE ON ECONOMIC PRODUCTIVITY IN SELECTED AFRICAN COUNTRIES"
The Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies,
65 (3): 365 - 393.
JEL Classification
H54, D24, 043, C33, O55
