The Role of Fiscal Transparency in Road Transport Infrastructure Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Transport Infrastructural Development, specifically, road transport infrastructure has been argued to play an important role in the growth of economic activities. In this way, countries all over the world, Sub-Sahara African countries alike, have made critical efforts to improve the quality of this infrastructure. However, the results of these efforts have not been felt much in Sub-Sahara African countries. The quality of road networks in Sub-Sahara African countries is relatively low to countries of other regions of the world. This has motivated this study to investigate the factors that determine the quality of road infrastructure, particularly, the role of fiscal transparency. The panel ARDL method, with a focus on its pooled-mean group (PMG), mean group (MG) and dynamic fixed effects (DFE) estimators was employed on the annual panel data of 34 Sub-Sahara African countries over the 2006 – 2018 periods. Also, Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel Granger non-causality were conducted to determine the casual relationship between fiscal transparency and quality of road transport infrastructure. The findings of the study revealed that more transparent fiscal activities are important to improve the quality of road transport infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa in the long run, with coefficient value of 0.008. More so, public debt and private investment are critical to long-run improvement in the quality of road infrastructure in the region (with coefficient values of 0.022 and 0.102 respectively). Therefore, the study recommended that better transparency of fiscal activities should be strengthened in these countries to achieve better quality of road transport infrastructure.