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Closing Technological Gaps to Alleviate Poverty: Evidence from 17 Sub-Saharan African Countries

You, Kefei, Dal Bianco, Silvia, Amankwah-Amoah, Joseph (2020) Closing Technological Gaps to Alleviate Poverty: Evidence from 17 Sub-Saharan African Countries. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 157 . Article Number 120055. ISSN 0040-1625. (doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120055) (KAR id:80713)

Abstract

This paper examines the dynamics of ‘technological catch-up’ and its effects in contributing to poverty alleviation, a crucial pillar of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Using data of 17 sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries and employing the superlativeindex number methodology, we first estimate the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) gap between these African nations and both the USA (leader of advanced countries) and China (leader of developing countries) to provide a measure for technological catch-up that is comparable across African countries. We then investigate the contribution of technological dynamics in SSA to poverty alleviation using the System Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) method. Our results show that during 1987-2014, many African nations have to some degree reduced technological gap to the USA, whilst only a few of them managed to briefly catch-up with China until the early 2000s and no such catching-up is observed thereafter, due to the exceptional technological advance achieved by China in the past fifteen years. We find that closing technological gap has had significant poverty alleviation effect for African nations, although such effect is weaker vis-à-vis China. Our paper therefore highlights the important role played by technological progress in alleviating poverty.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120055
Uncontrolled keywords: technological progress; technological gap; poverty; Africa; Sustainable Development Goals
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions: Divisions > Kent Business School - Division > Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and International Business
Depositing User: Joseph Amankwah-Amoah
Date Deposited: 03 Apr 2020 04:38 UTC
Last Modified: 21 Nov 2021 00:00 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/80713 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Amankwah-Amoah, Joseph.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0383-5831
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