Access to Electricity and Economic Growth in the WAEMU: Causality Analysis

The objective of this paper is to determine the possible link between economic growth and electricity access rate. An autoregressive lag model (ARDL) on panel data from 1998 to 2019 for West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) member states was used. This model shows that in long term, the growth rate has a positive impact on access to electricity in WAEMU member states. In the short term, economic growth rate has a positive and significant impact on electricity access rate only in Benin. The results of Granger causality test show an unidirectional relationship from GDP growth rate, investment rate to access to electricity.