Persistence and trends in CO2 emissions in Africa: is Chinese FDI behind these features?

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the statistical features of the CO2 emissions and CO2 emissions per capita in a group of 45 African countries by looking at their degree of persistence and also testing for the existence of trends in the data. In addition, we also investigate if this level of emissions is related to the Chinese FDI in Africa. The results are very heterogeneous across countries, observing orders of integration statistically below 1 in a group of countries; in others, the majority of them, the values are around 1, while for some others, the degree of integration is statistically significantly above 1. Linear time trends are observed in approximately half of the countries. These results imply that, in the long term, public measures to reduce CO2 emissions may be required in the majority of the countries since in the event of shocks the series will not return by themselves to their original levels. If we look at Chinese FDI in these countries, we observe that there seems to be no relationship between the Chinese investment in Africa and the CO2 emission persistence, though this result needs to be contrasted in future research.