Women’s Political Participation and Energy Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: Effects and Transmission Channels

Energy poverty remains a major challenge for sustainable and inclusive economic growth, good governance, peace and stability in developed countries and especially in developing regions such as Africa. In addition to this energy challenge, the participation of women in political decision-making remains another great challenge for African countries. To date, few studies have examined the effects of women?s political participation on energy poverty. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the effects of women?s political participation on energy poverty (measured mainly by access to electricity) in a panel of 45 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1997-2018. Additionally, this paper examines the transmission channels through which women?s political participation affects energy poverty. The empirical evidence is based on fixed-effects and the generalized method of moments (GMM), and the following results are established: First, women parliamentarians improve access to electricity for both the total population and urban and rural populations. In other words, results show that women parliamentarians reduce energy poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. These findings are robust to a series of sensitivity checks. Second, we identify control of corruption and democracy as the main transmission channels through which women parliamentarians promote access to electricity. These results highlight the important role of women politicians in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including access to electricity in Africa. JEL Classification : J16 ; O55 ; P18 ; Q43