Female Labour-Force Participation and Clean Energy Transition in Sub-Saharan Africa: Asymmetric Quantile Evidence

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) bears a disproportionate burden of neonatal mortality, while access to electricity and clean cooking remains limited, placing newborn survival at the intersection of sustainable development goals (SDGs) 3, 5, and 7. This study examines the relationships between electricity access, clean cooking access, female labour-force participation (FLF), and neonatal mortality across 42 SSA countries from 2000 to 2021. Using the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR), the Driscoll–Kraay robustness estimates, and the Juodis–Karavias–Sarafidis (JKS) panel Granger non-causality test, the analysis explores distributional heterogeneity, interaction effects, and predictive temporal relationships. The findings indicate that greater access to electricity and clean cooking is associated with lower neonatal mortality, with larger point estimates at higher conditional quantiles. The interaction between electricity and clean cooking access is negative and statistically significant, suggesting a complementary relationship between the two energy-access dimensions. FLF strengthens the negative association between clean cooking access and neonatal mortality but weakens the corresponding association for electricity access. This is the reverse of the hypothesised pattern and points to distinct gender-related pathways. The JKS results indicate that changes in clean cooking access predict neonatal mortality, while neonatal mortality predicts electricity access and changes in female labour-force participation. These findings underscore the importance of considering electricity access, clean cooking, and female labour-force participation jointly when designing policies to improve neonatal health and advance SDGs 3, 5, and 7 in SSA.