The ecological footprint in Africa: identifying convergence clubs from 1970 to 2018

Understanding the dynamics of air emissions is important in implementing efficient policies to combat climate change, and the convergence of air pollutants is a major concern for planners. Nevertheless, most of the existing evidence focuses on developed regions. In this paper, we analyse the evolution of the ecological footprint for the African continent, during 1970–2018. The Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) panel club convergence approach is carried out. This framework allows us to test the null hypothesis of absolute convergence for a pool of data and to identify groups of countries that converge to the same steady state. Our results offer important insights into the emissions catch-up exhibited by these countries, but do not support the hypothesis that all countries of the African region converge to a single equilibrium. The empirical results strongly support the existence of two convergence clubs. Our empirical findings have important implications for African policymakers in terms of mitigation policies, as the results suggest that a common environmental policy across the entire African continent is sub-optimal, since these regions have heterogeneous behaviours and move towards different equilibriums.