Quality of urban infrastructural service accessibility and human well-being in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Urban infrastructure critically influences how urban people carry their lives and mediates how services central to human well-being are accessed. Therefore, the main of this study is twofold: One, the study interrogates how the quality of urban infrastructural service accessibility influences human well-being, and two, how governance interactively with urban infrastructural services affects human well-being using balanced panel data from 2000 to 2020 from 22 Sub-Saharan African countries. Applying the Driscoll-Kraay and Two-Step Instrumental Variable Generalized Method of Moments (2SIV-GMM) in panel dynamic model setup, we uncover that increasing the quality of accessing urban infrastructural services results in enhanced human well-being. Interrogating the role of governance on human well-being, the findings depict a significant detrimental interactive effect between governance and urban infrastructural services on human well-being. Accounting for rapid urbanization in the Sub-Saharan African region, the results illustrate significant negative control effects of urbanization rate and aftermath urban agglomeration on human well-being. Conclusively, effective government policies that influence higher levels of human well-being in regions with large urban agglomerations are paramount. Thus, effective government investments in urban infrastructural services in Sub-Saharan Africa remain a vital sustainability policy agenda.