Energy Consumption-Economic Growth nexus in Sub-Saharan Countries: what can we learn from a meta-analysis? (1996-2016)

International audienceThe relationship between energy consumption and economic growth remains one of the most debated topics in the economics literature. Studies in this field have been carried out in developed countries since the end of the 70s, but they not have led to consensus about the relationship other thanfinding four causality directions: unidirectional in two directions, bidirectional, or neutral. This lack of consensus remains one of the most relevant findings on energy issues. During the 2010s, the scope of the studies on this relationship broadened since, for example, energy demand in Sub-Saharan Africa has outpaced that in the North and the IEA has forecasted the greatest increase in energy consumption to come from this area. The relationship between energy consumption and economic growth began to be studied in Sub-Saharan Africa in the late 90s, using the same method as for developed countries and with the same lack of consensus on the direction of causality. This paper attempts to clarify this situation through a meta-analysis of fifty articles published since 1996 to 2016. This meta-analysis involves five analytical categories: type of publication, geographical area studied, econometrics method used, energy consumption indicators, and control variables. Each of these dimensions includes many disaggregated variables. Logistic regressions are run on the variables presented above for each of the four causality hypotheses. In research that studies single countries, the likelihood of finding for a given causality hypothesis is very sensitive to the econometric method implemented. Findings on a panel of countries are then presented; their methods assert the neutrality hypothesi