Revisiting the drivers of electricity consumption in designated Sub-Saharan African regions: Unraveling the role of education

It has been established that steady supply of energy to various sectors of the economy is critical for societal growth and development. According to recent figures, barely one-third of the whole population in Sub-Saharan Africa has access to electricity, making the region the poorest in the world in terms of access to electrical power today. This stands in stark contrast to the vast energy resources that could be utilized to provide the necessary energy. In this context, various researches have attempted to identify various factors that influence electricity use. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is relatively limited empirical study carried out to quantify the influence of latent drivers of electricity consumption, particularly taking into account the important role of education. Thus, this existing study effectively investigates the potential factors influencing electricity consumption by taking into account the impact of education in ten selected Sub-Saharan African nations between 1990 and 2020. In addition to education, the study included population, urbanization, and economic growth as relevant variables to mitigate concerns about variable bias resulting from omission. Bearing in mind the potential occurrence of residual cross-sectional connectedness and slope heterogeneity issues, the augmented mean group and the common correlated effect mean group techniques were utilized as the prime estimation methods. Key findings revealed that education has an enormous and palpable effect on the consumption of electricity in the panel scenario, whereas country-specific results yielded a mixed bag of meaningful outcomes. Such cutting-edge approaches and results suggest that education is important in terms of Sub-Saharan Africa's electricity consumption. Based on the empirical findings, additional practical policy recommendations are presented.