The impact of governance on university performance in Sub-Saharan African countries: an econometric analysis with panel data

Abstract

The relevance of higher education for sustainable social development has been noted for a long time in world history. As for Africa, aware that the key to any desired development is an educated people, a large part of the countries of this continent have formed development plans based on human capital. Governance, for its part, is not dissociated from this development discourse. From this point, our research paper aims to study the impact of national governance on university performance through panel data from 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Benin, Gabon, Cameroon, Mauritius, Uganda, Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa) from 2002 to 2016. By adopting an Ad'ARDL regression model, we will relate our study variables. Governance will be measured by the governance sub-indicators from the World Bank database, namely voice and accountability, quality of regulation and control of corruption. As for academic performance, it is multidimensional. As part of this work, where we used academic performance measured by the number of scientific publications to be collected from the SCImago Country Rank over the same period, we were able to deduce that governance positively impacts research performance.

Keywords: National governance, university performance, academic performance, econometric modeling, scientific publication

JEL Classification: A20
Paper type: Empirical research