The nexus of environmental sustainability and agro-economic performance of Sub-Saharan African countries

The increasing concern of environmental degradation and climate change impacts of agricultural-based activities are becoming more pronounced in the Sub-Sahara region of Africa especially due to urgent drive to meeting food, healthy diet, and economic needs. In retrospect. This novel study explores the relationship between agro-economic performance, the Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Total natural rent, urbanization and environmental degradation vis-a-vis (Carbon dioxide emissions) in a carbon function. The empirical analysis used a panel data for the period 1980-2014 for the selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The Kao test uncovers a co-integration between carbon dioxide emissions, Real Gross domestic product, Total natural rent, agriculture and urbanization. The panel Pooled Mean Autoregressive distributed lag model (PMG-ARDL) posits a positive and significant connection between the gross domestic product and CO2 emissions in the long run. Our examination asserts that agricultural value-added reduces emissions in sub-Saharan Africa while urbanization and natural resource rent both increases CO2 emissions in the long run. In addition, the causality analysis reveals a bidirectional link between agriculture value-added and CO2 emissions. Essentially, policymakers in African nations must pay close attention to the issues of rural-urban drift as this leads to more emissions.