The criticality of growth, urbanization, electricity and fossil fuel consumption to environment sustainability in Africa

Simplice A Asongu; Mary Oluwatoyin Agboola; Andrew Adewale Alola; Festus Victor Bekun

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136376

The criticality of growth, urbanization, electricity and fossil fuel consumption to environment sustainability in Africa

Sci Total Environ. 2020 Apr 10:712:136376. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136376. Epub 2020 Jan 7.

Authors

Simplice A Asongu¹, Mary Oluwatoyin Agboola², Andrew Adewale Alola³, Festus Victor Bekun⁴

Affiliations

¹ African Governance and Development Institute, P.O. Box 8413, Yaoundé, Cameroon. Electronic address: asongusimplice@yahoo.com.
² College of Business, Dar Al Uloom University, 1 Mizan St. Al Falah, Riyadh 13314, Saudi Arabia. Electronic address: maryagboola@dau.edu.sa.
³ Faculty of Economics Administrative and Social Sciences, Istanbul Gelisim University, Istanbul, Turkey. Electronic address: aadewale@gelisim.edu.tr.
⁴ Faculty of Economics Administrative and Social Sciences, Istanbul Gelisim University, Istanbul, Turkey. Electronic address: fbekun@gelisim.edu.tr.

PMID: 31927442
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136376

Abstract

While most African economies are primarily sandwiched with the seemingly unsurmountable task of attaining consistent economic growth and unhindered energy supply, the enormous threat posed by environmental degradation has further complicated the economic and environmental sustainability drive. In this context, the present study examines the effect of economic growth, urbanization, electricity consumption, fossil fuel energy consumption, and total natural resources rent on pollutant emissions in Africa over the period 1980-2014. By employing selected African countries, the current study relies on the Kao and Pedroni cointegration tests to cointegration analysis, the Pesaran's Panel Pooled Mean Group-Autoregressive distributive lag methodology (ARDL-PMG) for long run regression while Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) is employed for the detection of causality direction among the outlined variables. The study traces long run equilibrium relationships between examined indicators. The ARDL-PMG results suggest a statistical positive relationship between pollutant emissions and urbanization, electricity consumption and non-renewable energy consumption. Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Granger causality test lends support to the long-run regression results. A bi-directional causality is observed between pollutant emissions, electricity consumption, economic growth and pollutant emissions while a unidirectional causality is apparent between total natural resources rent and pollutant emission. Based on these results, several policy implications for the African continent were suggested. (a) The need for a paradigm shift from fossil fuel sources to renewables is encouraged in the region (b) The need to embrace carbon storage and capturing techniques to decouple pollutant emissions from economic growth on the continent's growth trajectory. Further policy insights are elucidated.

Keywords: Africa; Economic growth; Electricity consumption; Non-renewable energy consumption; Panel econometrics.