How ICTs Moderate the Effect of Global Value Chains’ Participation on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Using data from Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1990–2015, this study examines the effects of Global Value Chains’ (GVCs) participation on economic growth by distinguishing participation in upstream, participation in downstream and sectors-based participation. The study also focuses on how the economic growth effect of GVCs’ participation can be affected by the ICTs. The Driscoll and Kraay’ estimation approach applied to the cross-lagged panel model enabled to overcome the cross-sectional dependence, heteroscedasticity, errors’ autocorrelation and reverse causality problems. The generalized method of moments (GMM) is further employed for the robustness check. The findings are robust and indicate that the GVCs’ participation (general, upstream, downstream and sectorial) boosts economic growth in SSA countries. These positive effects hold and are even more intensive when the GVCs’ participation is modulated by the ICTs. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that SSA countries should focus on the downstream GVCs’ participation that is the production and export of the (high technologies) intermediate goods that are essential for the production activities of other GVCs’ stakeholders. For the sectors-based participation, the study seems to show that participation in the services sector promotes more economic growth, followed to some extent by the mining, agriculture and manufacturing sectors.