Financial Inclusion, Energy Transition, and Sustainable Development in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Distributional Panel Analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) faces pressing financing and structural transitions to achieve the 2030 Agenda, yet the distributional relationships linking financial inclusion and renewable energy adoption to sustainable development goal (SDG) achievement remain underexplored. This study investigates the roles of multidimensional financial inclusion and renewable energy consumption shares on composite SDG performance across 38 SSA countries from 2000 to 2019 using method of moments quantile regression (MMQR). The findings reveal three key insights. Financial inclusion demonstrates a positive, universally significant, and increasing conditional association with composite SDG achievement across all quantiles, with Dumitrescu–Hurlin tests indicating unidirectional Granger‐predictive precedence from financial access indicators to SDG performance. Renewable energy consumption displays a statistically significant negative conditional association with composite SDG scores, reflecting the high initial capital outlays, infrastructural bottlenecks, and the heavy prevalence of traditional, low‐efficiency biomass within regional renewable energy shares. Foreign direct investment (FDI) intensifies its negative impact across quantiles, as per the pollution haven hypothesis. From a managerial perspective, financial institutions and fintech operators should prioritize expanding interoperable mobile money and agent banking networks to harness scale economies in underserved markets. Concurrently, development finance managers and policymakers must structure concessional, derisked climate finance vehicles to ease sovereign transition costs, while establishing targeted ESG screening criteria to redirect FDI toward clean, value‐adding sectors.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Sustainable Development, 2026 · DOI ↗