Energy consumption and economic growth in Sub-Saharan African countries: Further evidence

This article examines the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth within a multivariate approach which incorporates physical capital, land, trade openness and financial development in 13 Sub-Saharan African countries. The autoregressive distributed lag bounds approach to cointegration and a modified version of the Granger non-causality test are applied to investigate the short-term and the long-term properties. The results show the existence of a long-term relationship in eight out of the 13 countries and evidence of growth hypothesis is reported in Gabon, Kenya and Nigeria. We also observe the existence of the conservation hypothesis in Sudan and Zambia, feedback hypothesis in Cameroon, and a neutrality nexus in Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa and Togo. These findings provide useful reference in designing appropriate country specific environmental and energy policies.