The role of technology in the non-renewable energy consumption-quality of life nexus: insights from sub-Saharan African countries

This study examines the impacts of non-renewable energy (NRE) on quality of life (QOL) through the conditioning role of technology on a panel of 43 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period spanning 1990–2019. For easy traceability of the channel through which NRE affects QOL, the aggregate measure of Human Development Index (HDI) was decomposed into three namely life expectancy, education, and per capita GDP (GDPPC). Four indicators such as coal, natural gas, petroleum oil (disaggregated), and fossil fuel (aggregated) capture NRE while ICT service exports are used to proxy technology. The empirical analyses are deployed on a two-step system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM) with forward orthogonal and the Panel Fixed Effects. Similarly, the empirical analyses also consider four regions (viz: South, West, East, and Central) in SSA. The following findings are established. First, the indicators of non-renewable energy (NRE) are statistically significant and negatively signed when HDI, life expectancy, and GDPPC are the outcome variables but positive for education. Second, the role of technology is examined from two angles: unconditional (single) and conditional (interaction with NRE variables). Across all models, technology proves to be QOL enhancing. Third, while the test of nonlinearity in the NRE-QOL nexus is confirmed, the findings are also consistent with the sub-regional analyses.