The COVID-19 Pandemic and Sectoral Output in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Information and Communications Technology

The study analysed the effect of ICT on growth across three main sectors, namely agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Similarly, the study investigated the moderating role of ICT in tempering the negative effects of the pandemic on output growth in sub-Saharan Africa over the period 2000-2021. The study adopted the dummy variable approach by assigning 1 to year 2020, and 0 otherwise to account for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic using a battery of econometric techniques such as the generalised method of moments (GMM) to control for heterogeneity and endogeneity issues and the Driscoll-Kraay non-parametric covariance matrix estimator to address the potential spillover effect of technology spillover. The results are robust to different estimation techniques. The results showed that ICT helped to boost productivity in the services sector than any other sector. Importantly, the results showed that ICT can help to reduce the negative effects of a pandemic and help to boost productivity in SSA. One main economic implication of the study is that increasing investments in improved ICT infrastructure, particularly in the services sector, may help to boost productivity in SSA. This is consistent with the World Bank report (2023) that the services sector, driven by rapid growth in information and communication technologies (ICTs), has been the driving force behind the post-pandemic recovery in some parts of Africa.