Impact of Religious Affiliation on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper is about the relationship between religious affiliation and economic performance in Sub-Saharan Africa. This relationship has become the focus of a growing amount of literature worldwide but is unique to Sub-Saharan Africa because of widespread poverty in the region, which experienced changes in religious affiliation early in the 20th century. Poverty coincides with slow economic growth in many, but not all, countries in Sub- Saharan Africa. Multiple regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses about the impact of religious affiliation on economic growth for a cross section of Sub-Saharan nations, using data from 2010. The dataset has various economic growth indicators including the variable of interest, religious affiliation, which is measured in terms of segments of the population practicing Christianity or Islam. The regression analysis is used to test the null hypothesis that religious affiliation has no impact on economic performance. Preliminary findings based upon the regression analysis indicate that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected and religious affiliation does not have an impact on economic performance in Sub-Saharan Africa for 2010.No embargoAcademic Major: Operations Managemen