Green Financial Technology and Natural Resource Rents for Clean Energy: Pathways Towards Ecological Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to achieve sustainable development through facilitating green transition projects, leveraging the revenue generated from its abundant natural resources. However, the resource curse hypothesis suggests that developing nations often face problems with corruption that hinder economic development in these countries. The present study aims to investigate how environmental sustainability can be advanced in Sub-Saharan Africa using revenue from natural resources in the presence of green financial technology and clean energy. Therefore, data for Sub-Saharan Africa from 2000 to 2023 are employed in the analysis. The analysis of these data is undertaken with the ‘Method of Moments Quantile Regression’ technique, and the ‘Panel Correlated Standard Errors’ is used for robustness checks. The key findings presented in this research depict the importance of natural resource rents in supporting sustainable environments in Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, the revenue from natural resources can be used to support green transition projects in developing nations with high natural resource endowments. Moreover, renewable energy and green finance foster a reduction in ecological footprint, hence supporting environmental sustainability. Consequently, technological innovation and financial development do not promote the achievement of environmental sustainability, raising questions about the environmental policies and regulations in Sub-Saharan Africa. To this end, there is a need for policy reforms and corruption control in order to prevent the misallocation and misuse of resources designed to support green transition projects.