How Financial Development Is Driving the Growth and Environmental Dimensions of Sustainable Development in Africa: Heterogeneous Analyses

Globally, we face a policy dilemma between desiring more economic growth and safeguarding the deteriorating ecosystem, which have an apparent trade-off. Consequently, financing growth often comes with strong concerns for the ecological implications, which is yet to be empirically resolved. Hence, the current study examined the growth and environmental effects of financial development from three angles, each with a robust indicator, comprising financial development index, financial institution index, and financial market index. The scope of this study was financial development in 30 selected African countries from 1996 to 2021. This study extends the frontier of knowledge by estimating the moderating roles of regulatory quality and digitalization coupled with other control variables: renewable and nonrenewable energy, government expenditure, trade openness, and foreign direct investment. The empirical evidence relies on estimators such as common correlated effects (mean group), the system-generalized method of moment, and method of moment quantile regression. The findings from this study reveal that financial development propels economic growth but to the detriment of the ecosystem. However, when the interactive effects of regulatory quality and digitalization are considered, the negative externalities of growth-induced financial development are reduced. Furthermore, control variables such as renewable energy and foreign direct investment promote growth without escalating ecological damage. This is in contrast to nonrenewable energy, government expenditure, and trade openness, which propel economic growth at the expense of the ecological system. Policy recommendations that balance the trade-off between the two measures are put forward based on the research outcomes.