The impact of urbanization and industrial structure upgrading on energy intensities in Sub-Saharan Africa

Rapid urbanization and advances in industrial economic activities provide stimulus for increased energy consumption intensities, economic growth, and environmental sustainability. As a result, there has been research interest on the impact of urbanization and industrial structure upgrades on energy intensity in both developed (USA) and emerging (China) economies. However, there is limited research in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). As a results, this study explores the subject matter with a focus on SSA by employing a both homogenous (uniform across countries) and heterogeneous (varies across countries) estimation techniques. Using a panel of thirty-six (36) countries and a dataset spanning from 1980 to 2019, we discovered that urbanization has a positive and significant effect on energy intensities (electricity, primary energy, and petroleum consumption) in SSA. However, the study found industrial structure upgrading to have a positive effect on energy intensities in the dynamic homogeneous estimation, but the effect turns out to be negative in the heterogeneous estimation. Based on these findings, we propose that urbanization and industrial structure upgrading are the primary causes of energy shortages in SSA.