Is democracy pro poor in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Abstract

This study examines if democracy reduces poverty in 40 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1999–2018. For this purpose, we employ the Generalised Method of Moments. The results show that democracy is not directly associated with poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa. However, this observation hides important non-linearities and an interesting pattern of policy complementarities. Indeed, democracy is associated with poverty reduction in countries where economic growth is strong and human capital high. The robustness tests carried out do not change these results. This means that poor economic growth and weak human capital not only have a direct negative effect on the well-being of SSA countries, but also prevent the poor in those countries from benefitting the gains of democracy. Therefore, in order to reduce poverty in SSA, policy makers should continue the process of democratization while simultaneously adopting policies of economic development and human capital building. Democracy in isolation is useless for the poor in SSA.