The role of natural resource wealth and national-level economic forces in energy poverty intensity in African economies

Abstract

Despite the overwhelming natural resource endowments and economic progression of Africa, the continent happens to be the world's poorest energy source in terms of availability, affordability, and accessibility of energy for basic human needs. Consequently, this paper examined the contributions of natural resource rents and homogenous economic factors to energy poverty intensity in 26 African countries between 1990 and 2023. Methodologically, the method of moments quantile regression approach was employed in deriving the study's main inferences. Also, the dynamic common correlated estimation technique was applied for robustness. Empirically, the paper demonstrated that in African economies with relatively high levels of energy poverty intensity, resource endowments have a weak effect in propelling the former. However, natural resource rents are more important to exacerbate energy poverty in African countries with relatively more moderate energy poverty severity than those with low intensity. As a national-level economic factor, while income has an insignificant effect irrespective of energy poverty intensity in the African economies, public outlay substantially aggravates across all energy poverty intensity classifications by the same magnitude. However, infrastructure development reduced energy poverty more in economies with relatively low energy poverty severity, followed by moderate and high-intensity nations. Also, population growth's adverse impact was most dominant in the low-energy-poverty-intense countries, followed by the medium- and high-energy-poverty-severe economies. Applicable policy measures were proposed by the study.