Can the constitutional concentration of power be linked to Africa's energy poverty?

Abstract

A large majority of Africans do not have access to modern energy. Initiatives at the international, regional, and national levels have been launched to address energy access; yet, Africa, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, remains volatile. At the same time, Africa is one of the world's poorest performing regions in terms of governance, even though many African nations decentralized power in the 1990s to advance constitutionalism and break free from the highly centralized governance systems left over from the colonial era. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of constitutional power concentration on energy poverty in 36 African countries using the Entropy Balancing and system GMM methods. The findings reveal that constitutional power concentration worsens energy poverty via corruption, inequality, tax evasion, and government integrity. African policymakers should pursue a more decentralized system of political authority as a policy option for combating energy poverty.