FINANCIAL INCLUSION, INSTITUTIONAL EFFICIENCY AND UNDERNOURISHMENT IN SUB-SAHARA AFRICA

The governments of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and international organizations have undertaken a variety of undernourishment-targeting initiatives, such as financial inclusion, humanitarian interventions, social reengineering and institutional changes, in line with the United Nations' top priority of eradicating undernourishment as articulated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We have investigated the crucial role that institutional quality plays in diminishing the prevalence of undernourishment through financial inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa. With a time, scope of 18 years and a cross-sectional scope of 29 SSA nations, we used the system generalized Methods of Moments (system-GMM) in a panel data setting for our analysis. For the linear system-GMM, we discovered a strong positive self-replicating effect of prevalence of undernourishment, diverse effects of financial inclusion, and an unremarkable role of institutions. However, in the context of a nonlinear system-GMM method, the role of institutions strengthens the impact of financial inclusion. Therefore, we stressed the need for relevant authorities to develop informed policy alternatives that are based on instantaneous surveillance of changes in prevalence of undernourishment in the SSA region.