Governance, Growth and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Revisit of the Evidence
- Akpan H. Ekpo
- ( paper pages. 153 - 186 )
Abstract
Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries remain underdeveloped despite enormous human, material and natural resources. In the last two decades, the growth rates in most of the countries have fluctuated between 4 and 6 percent annually. In some countries, the celebrated growth rates have been far less than the growth in population. In recent times, unemployment, especially among the youth has been quite high, averaging about 40 per cent. The provision of social services such as health delivery, education, running water and housing, remain a challenge. Some scholars have argued that Africa is rising, pointingto impressive growth rates in some countries, but forgetting that growth is not development. Other scholars have attributed the unsatisfactory economic performance togovernance challenges. The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between governance, growth, and development in SSA countries. Governance indicators such asaccountability, voice, quality of leadership, rule of law, are regressed on growth and development. Using a panel regression approach, the results show that democracy,unemployment, and corruption have negative relationships with growth. On the other hand, private investment shows a positive relationship with growth and is statisticallysignificant. Rule of law, regulatory quality and government effectiveness are negatively related to growth. But, political stability, voice, and accountability have positive impact ongrowth and are statistically significant. However, regulatory quality, size of government, political stability, and government effectiveness are positively linked to development but not growth. The overall results call for improvement in governance in SSA.
Citation
Akpan H. Ekpo.
2021.
"Governance, Growth and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Revisit of the Evidence"
The Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies,
63 (2): 153 - 186.
JEL Classification
010, 049
