Foreign direct investment, Green Technological Innovation and Energy Poverty: Empirical evidences from Sub-Saharan African countries

This study investigates the unconditional and conditional effects of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Green Technology Innovation (GTI) on Energy Poverty (EP) in 11 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 2000 to 2020. Given that EP captures the share of the population without access to energy, it includes electricity, clean fuel and technology for cooking (CFTP), renewable energy consumption (RECP), and the multidimensional energy poverty index (MEPI) which is computed using the PCA method. Furthermore, this study considere the overall, urban and rural supsamples, and the data from the World Bank and OECD databases. This study employs the FGLS and the Driscoll- Kraay approaches. The findings reveal that FDI and GTI negatively affect both electricity poverty and CFT poverty, whereas these effects are significantly positives for both REC poverty and MEPI. This means that, in the long term, FDI and GTI allow the alleviation of both electricity and CFT poverty; conversely, FDI and GTI strengthen renewable energy and MEPI irrespectively of the residential area. However, FDI-EP nexus is significanty affected through GTI development. Moreover, FDI and GTI contribute to strengthening the rural-urban poverty gap in access to both electricity and CFT. In light of these findings, policy implications are presented.