In the light of Africa’s palpable deficit in public infrastructure, we use System GMM to estimate a model of economic growth augmented by an infrastructure variable, for a panel of 45 Sub-Saharan African countries, over the period 2000-2011. We find that it is the spending on infrastructure and increments in the access to infrastructure that influence economic growth and development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Interestingly, these significant associations, especially those of infrastructure spending, are more important for lesser developed economies of the region than for the relatively more developed economies, which uncommonly have better than near-zero access to infrastructure. In addition to these robust direct links between the target variables, we find importantly that infrastructure access, and quality, also relate to economic growth indirectly via export diversification (trade competitiveness), and cross-border capital flows and export diversification, respectively. Among other important policy derivatives of our findings, we emphasize that efforts aimed at reversing Africa’s pervasive infrastructure deficit, in ways that enable economic growth and development, must be carefully nuanced.

中文翻译：

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基础设施真的能解释撒哈拉以南非洲的经济增长吗？

考虑到非洲在公共基础设施方面明显的赤字，我们使用系统GMM估算了一个由45个撒哈拉以南非洲国家在2000-2011年期间进行的，由基础设施变量增强的经济增长模型。我们发现，影响撒哈拉以南非洲经济增长和发展的是基础设施方面的支出和基础设施的获取增加。有趣的是，这些重要的协会，特别是基础设施支出协会，对本区域欠发达经济体比对相对较发达的经济体更为重要，后者相对好于接近零基础设施的访问。除了目标变量之间的这些牢固的直接联系之外，我们还重要地发现，基础架构的访问和质量，还分别通过出口多样化（贸易竞争力），跨境资本流动和出口多样化间接地涉及经济增长。在我们研究结果的其他重要政策衍生工具中，我们强调，旨在以能够促进经济增长和发展的方式扭转非洲普遍存在的基础设施赤字的努力，必须谨慎对待。