Revisiting the correlates of carbon emissions in Africa using a CS-ARDL model: does obesity matter?
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Although numerous studies have examined the determinants of CO₂ emissions in Africa, the potential association between obesity prevalence and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remains unexplored. Therefore, this study examines whether obesity prevalence is significantly associated with CO₂ emissions across African countries. Panel data for 46 African countries covering 1991 to 2022 periods were used. Some preliminary tests such as stationarity, slope heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence and cointegration were conducted to inform estimation of a Cross-Sectionally Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) model. The results revealed a long-run equilibrium relationship, as indicated by statistically significant and negative error correction terms ( p < 0.01). Although obesity was statistically insignificant ( p > 0.10), key structural and economic variables such as lagged emissions, GDP per capita, carbon intensity, and the livestock index positively and significantly influenced CO₂ emissions ( p < 0.05). Conversely, renewable energy use had a significant CO₂ mitigating effect ( p < 0.05). The findings indicate that after accounting for other economic and institutional drivers, obesity prevalence in Africa is not significantly associated with CO₂ emissions. Therefore, the recently hypothesised obesity-emissions relationship in the literature is not supported by the evidence from this study. The study contributes to the emerging health-environment literature by providing cross-country African evidence on whether population-level obesity translates into a detectable association with aggregate CO₂ emissions. The findings further highlight the importance of clean energy, sustainable urbanisation, agricultural transformation and inclusive green-growth policies for emissions mitigation in Africa.
Author: Abayomi Samuel Oyekale
Institution: North-West University
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,290
OpenAlex ID: W7222828780