Innovation and the sustainability gap in Sub Saharan Africa under regime shifts and transition dynamics

This paper examines whether innovation capacity can close the sustainability gap in Sub-Saharan Africa by analyzing the relationship between innovation, institutional quality, and environmental outcomes across 47 countries from 2005 to 2024. Using a dynamic panel framework combining fixed-effects, quantile regression, and System GMM estimation, we find that innovation alone does not significantly reduce emissions intensity or promote absolute decarbonization. However, among the governance dimensions examined, only voice and accountability shows a statistically significant association with emissions and notably in a positive direction, suggesting that democratic accountability in the SSA context may be linked to emissions-intensive growth rather than environmental restraint. The analysis reveals significant structural breaks around 2015, coinciding with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, suggesting that policy regimes matter for innovation-environment linkages. Quantile regression results indicate heterogeneous effects across the emissions distribution, with innovation and institutional factors showing stronger effects at higher quantiles. These findings challenge the assumption that expanding innovation capacity will automatically deliver environmental benefits, underscoring the need to align innovation systems explicitly with sustainability objectives and strengthen democratic governance institutions.