Heterogeneous dynamic impacts of nonrenewable energy, resource rents, technology, human capital, and population on environmental quality in Sub-Saharan African countries

This study examines the dynamic disaggregated impacts of nonrenewable, resource rents, technology, human capital, and population on environmental quality in 41 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The empirical analyses are anchored on the two-step system-generalized method of moments for data spanning 1996–2018. The following results are established. First, the indicators of nonrenewable energy (oil, coal, and gas), natural resource rents (oilr, coalr, gasr, and mineral), and population (rural and urban) deter environmental quality. Second, diverging effects are evident in the case of human capital where four of its proxies (expenditure on primary and secondary education, and school enrollment in primary and secondary education) promote environmental quality while the two others (expenditure and school enrollment in tertiary education) deter it. Third, among the proxies of technology, imports of goods and services, and mobile cellular subscriptions promote environmental quality while exports of goods and services deter it. Fourth, the robustness checks performed with the consideration of ecological footprint as the outcome variable shows that environmental quality in SSA has its peculiarity as different measures respond differently to similar regressors. On the policy front, it is suggested that unflinching efforts should be made toward discontinuing the consumption of nonrenewable energy. Furthermore, human capital development should be planned and executed in a way that will promote environmental quality across all levels of education.