Foreign aid and economic growth: Do energy consumption, trade openness and CO2 emissions matter? A DSUR heterogeneous evidence from Africa’s trading blocs

Abstract

The paramount vision of every country or sub-regions is to attain economic growth and sustainable economic growth. The paradigm drift of studies into foreign aid and sustainable economic growth has shown conflicting results that play on researchers to fill the gap of knowledge void. The plurality of studies looked at economic growth and foreign aid in single countries. However, one of the major determinants of sustainable growth such as CO2 emissions and trade goes beyond the boundaries of a country. Deductively, grouped countries or sub-regional studies are needed to ascertain the heterogeneous relationship and cross-sectional dependency among panels grouping. We fill these gaps with the recent empirical methodology to unveil the impact of foreign aid, CO2 emissions, trade openness, and energy consumption on economic growth. Thus a percentage rise in foreign aid corresponds to different significant weights in all panel groupings with exception of Southern African Development Community, which unveiled a non-significant estimate. Whereas trade openness in all panel grouping indicated a significant weight on economic growth. An increase in CO2 emissions has a significant material effect on economic growth in Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, Economic Community of West African States, and Community of Sahel-Saharan States. The impact of energy consumption on economic growth across the panel groupings was statistically significant with Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa having the highest weight impact. These results obtained in this study indicate that foreign aid, energy consumption, trade openness, and CO2 emissions are positively correlated with economic growth. Based on the finding, the significant of the policy implications suggested. (a) The need for a paradigm shift from fossil fuel sources to renewables is encouraged in the various trading blocs (b) The need to embrace carbon storage and capturing techniques to decouple pollutant emissions from economic growth on the continent’s growth trajectory.