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The environmental consequences of foreign aid and key economic indicators: the Sino-Africa perspective

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Abstract

The study differs substantially from earlier studies, by probing the environmental consequences of foreign aid and selected key economic indicators with a special focus on Sino-Africa. The study focused on China and its top foreign aid recipients in Africa in the last decade. This paper utilizes the Dynamic Augmented Mean Group Estimator (AMG), a robust and recent econometric approach to provide better statistical inferences; crucial for policy formulation and future reforms on foreign aid, trade, energy, pollutions, and economic growth of economies. The findings of the study revealed the China’s Foreign aid oriented towards infrastructure has varying impacts on the economic growth and the environment of most recipient African Countries. The findings revealed the incidence of foreign aid ameliorating pollution of the countries: Nigeria and Morocco under strong domestic institutions. The study is of key relevance for policymakers and stakeholders as it explicates the key pillars, policies, and guidelines needed for foreign aid, trade, economic growth, and related internal reforms for mitigating resulting environmental pollution across a wider international context.

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Data availability

Data on study variables can be extracted from the following sources:  http://china.aiddata.orghttps://comtrade.un.org/data; and https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

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Funding

This work was supported by Special Funds of the National Social Science Funds of China (18VSJ038).

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Authors

Contributions

Conceptualization [Kofi Baah Boamah and Jianguo Du]; Curation and formal analysis [Kofi Baah Boamah, Jianguo Du, Isaac Adjei Mensah]; Funding and Supervision by [Jianguo Du]; Investigation and Methodology [Kofi Baah Boamah, Jianguo Du, and Isaac Adjei Mensah] Writing-review and editing [Kofi Baah Boamah, Jianguo Du, Isaac Adjei Mensah ,Samuel Antwi , Abdul-Samad Siddique and James Ntiamoah Doku]. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianguo Du.

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Boamah, K.B., Du, J., Mensah, I.A. et al. The environmental consequences of foreign aid and key economic indicators: the Sino-Africa perspective. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 56281–56290 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16880-1

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