Distributional energy justice and the inclusive human development Agenda in Africa

• Examines the impact of distributional energy justice (EJ) on inclusive human development (IHDI). • The focus is on 36 African countries for the period 2010–2020. • Energy justice promotes IHDI in both low- and high-income African countries. • Only economic and governance readiness amplify the IHDI-enhancing effect of EJ. • Both the direct and conditional impacts of EJ are remarkable in high-income African countries. This study advances the economic development and wellbeing scholarship through three key contributions. First, we show how distributional energy justice (hereafter: energy justice) affects inclusive human development (IHDI) in Africa. Second, we demonstrate how climate readiness moderates the effect of energy justice on IHDI. Third, we provide new evidence on how the joint effect of energy justice and climate readiness differs across low- and high-income African countries. We make these contributions using macro data for 36 African countries from 2010 to 2020. The results reveal that energy justice promotes IHDI. The contingency analysis also demonstrates that climate readiness is a critical complementary mechanism for amplifying the impact of energy justice on IHDI. Notably, across the economic, social, and governance perspectives of climate readiness, the results show that the moderating effect of governance readiness is striking. Evidence from sensitivity analysis also indicates that economic and governance readiness conditions energy justice to enhance IHDI in both high- and low-income African countries; however, these gains become elusive for the latter once social readiness is considered. These findings underscore the urgent need for investments in energy justice and climate readiness to foster IHDI in Africa.