Financing for Sub-Saharan African sustainable development: from billions to trillions to action

Abstract

The study examines the various financial opportunities available to drive sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa. It investigates the impacts of private, public and multilateral financial opportunities available to drive sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa on GDP per capita, life expectancy, human capital development and fertility rate. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model on data from 1971 to 2018, the result reveals the existence of significant impact of financing from private, public and multilateral sector on sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, the study empirically shows that no single source of funding is sufficient to finance sustainable development of SSA nations. The study therefore recommends that government should play an active but non-distortionary role in financial development. Policies should aim at creating a conducive environment for financial sector development by promoting sound and stable macroeconomic policies. Multilateral development banks and bilateral donors should also strengthen access to private sources of finance by promoting improvement in business and investment climate.