Abstract

The study examines the effects of infrastructure deficiency on the economic performance of selected West African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, Cote d lvoire and Senegal on panel data generated from World Bank development indicator. The motivation of the study is based on low budgetary allocation in some year’s back by many developing countries of which Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, Senegal and Cote d lvoire were inclusive, toward investment and rehabilitation of infrastructure in favour of conducive business environment and trade liberalization, for economic growth and development. The study adopted pooled ordinary least square econometric method on the panel data after ensuring stationarity properties of the variables used for the study analysis. Infrastructural variables used in the study basically are gross fixed capital formation and human capital development index, while real gross domestic product were used as a proxy for economic performance, and the study control for inflation and financial system.

The study find out that the deficiency in infrastructure have negative impacts on the economic performance due to increase in cost of doing business in the selected countries. It was also revealed that deficiency in infrastructure in this region was as a result of low government spending on the sectors relating to both physical and social infrastructure in the economy. The study therefore recommends that government of the selected countries should increase the budgetary allocation to physical infrastructural development to ease cost of doing business, so that economic activities can be stimulated hence economic growth.

Key Words: Infrastructure deficiency, Economic growth, RGDP, West African country

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Dr. ABDULSALAM SIKIRU ADEMOLA