Reassessing the Education–FDI–Trade Nexus for a Sustainable Future: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

<ns5:p>Background Education, foreign direct investment (FDI), and trade openness can influence environmental sustainability through competing human-capital, technology-transfer, scale, composition, and pollution-haven channels. Evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa remains fragmented and often overlooks cross-sectional dependence and asymmetric responses. Methods This study examines a panel of Sub-Saharan African economies from 1990 to 2019 using production-based and consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions as environmental outcomes. The empirical strategy applies cross-sectional dependence and slope-heterogeneity diagnostics, second-generation unit-root and cointegration tests, dynamic seemingly unrelated regression, continuously updated fully modified and bias-corrected estimators, asymmetric decompositions, and panel causality tests. Results Education is consistently associated with lower emissions across the principal long-run specifications. FDI is generally associated with lower production-based and consumption-based emissions in the symmetric long-run estimates, while the asymmetric findings show that the environmental response can differ between positive and negative FDI shocks. Trade openness is predominantly emission-increasing, and urbanisation is associated with higher emissions. The robustness analyses support the stability of the core associations. Conclusions Sustainability policy in Sub-Saharan Africa should combine environmental education with screening and performance standards for FDI and trade-related production. Policies should account for asymmetric adjustment and economy-specific conditions when pursuing low-carbon development.</ns5:p>