📄 Abstract
This study examines the short-run and long-run effects of sectoral public expenditure on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from 2000 to 2023. Rather than treating government expenditure as a homogeneous fiscal aggregate, the study disaggregates public spending into education, health, defence and public debt servicing to determine whether their growth effects differ across expenditure categories and time horizons. Panel data covering 16 SSA countries were analysed using panel unit root tests, panel cointegration techniques and the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag framework. The stationarity results indicate that the variables become stationary after first differencing while the cointegration tests establish a long-run relationship between sectoral public expenditure and economic growth. The Panel ARDL results reveal heterogeneous effects across expenditure components. Education expenditure exhibits a positive but statistically insignificant relationship with economic growth in both the short run and long run, suggesting that increased educational spending has not generated a sufficiently strong measurable growth response across the sampled countries. Health expenditure displays different short-run and long-run effects, with the long-run relationship becoming positive. Defence expenditure also exhibits significant effects on economic growth while public debt servicing reflects the fiscal implications associated with meeting debt obligations. The error correction mechanism confirms convergence towards long-run equilibrium following short-run disturbances. The findings demonstrate that the growth consequences of public expenditure in SSA depend substantially on expenditure composition and time horizon. Fiscal policy should therefore prioritise the quality, efficiency and productive allocation of sectoral expenditure rather than relying principally on increases in aggregate government spending.
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📚 How to Cite:
AREMU, Jamiu Muhammed, BABADE. Tolu Isaac, ERINSAKIN, Obafemi , ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SECTORAL PUBLIC EXPENDITURE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: SHORT AND LONG-RUN DYNAMICS , Volume 12 , Issue 9, September 2026, International Journal of Global Economic Light (JGEL) , Pages: 10 - 18 ,