Renewable Energy, Oil Prices, Industrialization and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa : Robust Long-Run Dynamic Analysis from Cs-Ardl and Ccemg

The ever-increasing demand for sustainable energy and development requires a shift from non-renewable energy consumption across the globe, particularly the Sub-Saharan African region. The sub-Saharan African region is projected to experience population growth and impressive economic growth of 7% and 6% respectively by 2050, which is expected to increase energy consumption further, emphasizing climate change and sustainable development. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on fundamental factors that drive renewable energy usage in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper assesses the dynamic linkages between renewable energy, oil price, industrialization, and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. We used the cross-sectional augmented Autoregressive distributed (CS-ARDL), and the common correlated effect means group (CCEMG) to analyze such linkages for the period 1990–2015 while exploring the dynamics of energy consumption across income levels. The key empirical findings confirm a bidirectional causal relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in the long-run. The effect of renewable energy consumption is only observed for low and lower-middle income economies within the sub-region. The study further reveals a positive impact of oil prices on the economic growth of the sub-region