The Effect of Digitalisation and Corruption on Human Development in Sub‐Sahara Africa: Are There Regional Differences?

ABSTRACT The study explores the effect of digitalisation on corruption and on human development in Sub‐Sahara Africa (SSA) and its subregions. The fixed effects and Hausman–Taylor techniques and data for 33 SSA countries are used. We find that digitalisation has a nonlinear effect on corruption and on human development. The effect of digitalisation on corruption is insignificant across the subregions. Subregions (Middle and Southern Africa) with higher digitalisation levels recorded a bigger level of human development compared to East and West Africa. Furthermore, there is no significant effect of digitalisation on human development in the presence of corruption, but overall, digitalisation enhances human development in SSA. In Middle and Southern Africa (with high digitalisation), digitalisation increases human development in the presence of corruption; the opposite is reported for East and West Africa with lower levels of digitalisation. This is important for policy implication as digitalisation in SSA seems to be less than enough to fully exploit its potential.