Effects of infrastructures on environmental quality contingent on trade openness and governance dynamics in Africa

Recently, Africa has witnessed an upsurge in its infrastructure endowments mostly attributed to developments in the ICT sector. At the same time, while CO2 emission is reducing in other regions such as Europe, Africa is rather witnessing an upsurge. The objective of this study is to evaluate: (i) the effects of infrastructures on CO2 emission and (ii) how trade openness and governance contribute to mitigating these effects. The results from the system GMM methodology for 36 African countries between the 20032019 period show that infrastructural development exacerbates CO2 emission in Africa. This result is robust across different types of infrastructural development indexes. When the indirect effect regressions are carried out by interacting governance and trade openness with the different infrastructural development variables, the following results are obtained. Firstly, infrastructural development interacts with governance producing a positive net effect, up to a governance threshold estimate of 0.532 when the positive net effect is nullified. Secondly, infrastructures interact with trade openness producing a negative net effect up to a trade openness threshold of 78.066914 (% of GDP) when the negative net effect is nullified. Positive and negative synergy effects are also apparent. Practical policy implications are discussed based on the results obtained. (c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Africa has seen an increase in infrastructure development, but it has also experienced a rise in CO2 emissions. This study evaluates the effects of infrastructure on CO2 emissions and explores how trade openness and governance contribute to mitigating these effects in African countries. The findings indicate that infrastructure development exacerbates CO2 emissions in Africa. Additionally, the interactions between infrastructure and governance, as well as infrastructure and trade openness, have both positive and negative effects.