Evaluating Sub-Saharan Africa’s government expenditure, corruption control, and economic growth through the generalized method of moments technique

The link between government expenditure, corruption control, and economic growth is an imperative issue, as the productivity of government spending is mostly based on the degree of corruption prevention capacity in a nation. To evaluate the effects of government expenditure and economic growth in forty Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, between 2013 and 2023, data were analyzed using the system generalized method of moments (SYGMM) econometric technique. The study concludes that government expenditure hurts the economic growth of SSA before introducing corruption control in the growth model. In a similar vein, the SSA’s economic growth progress is found to be fueled when corruption control is introduced in the model. The outcome also demonstrates that government expenditure has a favorable impact on economic growth when it is combined with robust anti-corruption measures. In particular, a 1% change in the interactive term of government expenditure-corruption control is linked to an increase in SSA’s economic growth of 0.04200% in the short term and 0.04256% in the long term, all other factors being constant. This suggests that government expenditure supported by high ethical standards is good for the economy. The research comes to the conclusion that promoting economic growth in SSA needs ethical government expenditure. The inference for policy is that SSA nations need to support institutional ethics to strictly control and monitor government expenditures. Further, SSA countries need to improve their anti-corruption control systems, enhance transparency initiatives, and boost digital governance. Finally, SSA governments need to initiate the ‘From expenditure to ethical expenditure’ principle to stimulate economic growth.