Population growth and carbon dioxide emission: An investigation of the Africa perspective

This study examines the relationship between population growth and carbon dioxide emissions in the context of Africa perspective. Population growth and carbon dioxide emissions helped identify the key driving forces of environmental impacts by including other predictors in all the different income levels of all sampled countries in Africa. To explore the role of population growth in the emissions of carbon dioxide, this research employed a panel data set of 52 Africa countries from 1960 to 2012 using fixed effects, random effects and GLS/FGLS estimators to estimate the modified STIRPAT model. The results found that a 1% increase in population growth suggests an increase in carbon dioxide emission loads by about 0.33%, 1.08%, 0.57% and 2.32% on the average, controlling for all other anthropogenic driving forces, for LICA, LMICA, UICA and HICA respectively. There is a significant relationship between population growth and carbon dioxide emissions in all the national income levels in Africa.