Sub-Saharan African Quest for Economic Prosperity and Deforestation: Impact of Tourism on Forest Conversion

Deforestation remains among the most pressing environmental issues in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Widespread deforestation accelerates biodiversity loss, destabilizes ecosystems, and contributes to climate change, threatening both local communities and the natural heritage crucial to the region’s economic growth. This paper investigates the potential of tourism development as a means to reduce deforestation in the SSA region. Sustainable tourism offers a pathway for economic development that leverages natural resources without depleting them. We employ conventional panel and dynamic ordinary least square (POLS and DOLS) estimators with data between 2000 and 2020, pooled mean group (PMG), and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR) estimators employed for sensitivity and robustness check. The findings support U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curves for deforestation (EKCd), tourism is positively associated with deforestation and other control variables such as agricultural area, trade openness, forest rents, and foreign direct investment significantly impact forest conversion. Therefore, for SSA countries to attain economic growth and reduce deforestation, we suggest that policymakers adopt tourism activities for sustainable fleecing of natural resources and forests.