Assessment of clean trade, governance and environmental sustainability in Africa

Abstract: This study examines the role of governance in reducing the use of unclean energy intrade and its impact on environmental sustainability. The empirical findings are based on Twostep System Generalized Method of Moments (TSGMM). The dataset was collected for 45African countries that spans the period of 2008 to 2022. The initial result revealed thatgovernance has a neutral effect on environmental sustainability while trade openness reducesenvironmental sustainability. Furthermore, strengthening governance towards clean trade bymitigating unclean energy and logistics in trade improves environmental sustainability. Moreconcisely, the finding shows that consolidation governance has a joint impact of improvingenvironmental sustainability by 0.03%. The policy implication of this finding is that clean tradecan be achieved by consolidating the region’s governance index. This will then assist inreducing the use of unclean energy in trade and subsequently improve environmentalsustainability.