The Impacts of Public Expenditure on Sustainable Environmental Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This study examined the impacts of public expenditure on sustainable environmental development (SED) in sub-Saharan African countries using the annual data of 35 countries during the period of 2008--2022. This study is needed because previous studies failed to consider a significant share of sustainable environmental development goals, and their findings were inconsistent. The study employed Dynamic Panel, two step-System-Generalized method of Moments (GMM) estimation techniques to test the effect of military, agricultural, health, and education expenditure on the sustainable environmental development. The results indicate that changes in public spending in the military, health and agriculture positively and significantly affect sustainable environmental development in SSA, whereas education expenditure has a positive but insignificant effect. For agricultural, health and education expenditures, sustainable development theory is valid, whereas for military spending expenditure, ecological modernization theory is valid, and sustainable development theory is not supported. To realize SED development in sub-Saharan Africa, policy makers in sub-Saharan African countries have suggested increasing expenditures on defense technology to improve environmental development sustainability; investment in sustainable farming practices, promoting organic agricultural practices that reduce waste, pollution, and the use of renewable energy using technologies; and incentivizing programs that increase public awareness of ecological quality and upsurge investment in the health sector to improve the health status of people by so doing enhance SED.