Impact of Education Expenditure on Economic Growth in West African Countries: Special Attention to the Gambia.

This study is conducted to observe the impact of public education expenditure on economic growth in five West African countries namely: The Gambia, Ghana, Niger, Mali, and Senegal. In addition, we generated a study called ECOWAS representing West Africa. In order to advance into the study, we used econometric tools such as Augmented Dickey Fuller test (ADF), Johansson Cointegration Test, Error Correction Model (ECM) and Granger Causality Test Analysis. The target sample consist of panel data collected based on its availability for each selected West African country covering different ranges from 1968 to 2015. The result of the ADF test revealed that some of the variables are individually non-stationary at level but stationary at first difference. The Johansson cointegration test indicated a cointegration relationship between the variables for some countries and ECM coefficients revealed for all the countries indicated an evidence of convergence after short run deviation from equilibrium. The Granger Causality test result suggest a unidirectional causality that run from Government Education Expenditure (Edu) to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for ECOWAS and the reverse is true for Ghana and Mali. There is no causal direction revealed between the variables for The Gambia, Niger and Senegal. However, the study concluded that Education Expenditure has significant long run and short run impact on economic growth in West Africa