Abstract
The study aimed at investigating the effect of economic growth on employment in Sub-Saharan African. The study employed secondary data that was sourced from the World Bank, World development indicators and FAOSTAT covering 30 Sub Saharan African Countries for the period 1990 to 2015. The study employed the traditional neo-classical aggregate production function in its estimation of the regression results. The panel data obtained was analysed using the STATA software program. Hausman test was used and it determined that fixed effects estimation was preferred to random effects estimation and therefore fixed effects regression was used during the analysis. Empirical results on effect of economic growth on employment established that total employment, women in employment and men in employment statistically and significantly influenced economic growth and on the other hand economic sectors which comprised of domestic capital, imports, exports and services sectors statistically and significantly influenced economic growth.
Highlights
1.1 Background to the studySub - Saharan African Countries have experienced sustained economic growth in the past two decades and especially from the year 2000 onwards
The results as presented in table 1 presents elasticity’s of total employment, domestic capital, imports, exports, service sector, women in employment, and men in employment with respect to gross domestic product that is used as a proxy of economic growth
5.3 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 5.3.1 Conclusion and recommendations on relationship between economic growth and employment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) From the findings of the study, it was concluded that increased economic growth statistically and significantly influenced total employment as well as employment of both men and women in the SSA region, with total employment being influenced more by the economic growth than the other variables in SSA
Summary
Sub - Saharan African Countries have experienced sustained economic growth in the past two decades and especially from the year 2000 onwards. These countries had been bedeviled by economic stagnation for two decades earlier before experiencing economic boom. The period of economic decline had been characterized by military conflicts, economic mismanagement and an external debt that was unsustainable. Apart from a few SSA countries that have experienced conflicts which have made them not to realize economic boom, all the other SSA countries have benefited from the said economic boom. Two decades earlier SSA region had been written off as having been doomed to failure (Zamfir 2016)
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