Measurement Of Africa’s Sustainability Performance Based On Data Envelopment Analysis

Since the introduction of the concept of sustainable development,how to measure sustainability has emerged as an essential concern for policymakers.The difficulty originates primarily from the multi-dimensionality nature of the sustainability concept.In this context,promoting sustainability has become an essential policy concern in Africa,as the continent faces numerous challenges in achieving sustainable development.In this regard,understanding and quantifying the continent’s sustainability performance is crucial for African policymakers in designing effective policies and strategies to address these challenges.This dissertation,therefore,contributes to the field of sustainable development by designing new methodological frameworks that measure sustainability performance at various levels(economic,social,and environmental)and investigate the contribution of technological progress to sustainability,given the well-known importance and role of technological advancements in achieving sustainable development goals(SDGs).It adopts data envelopment analysis(DEA)as the main assessment method since the DEA technique is an increasingly popular non-parametric method for measuring the performance of decisionmaking units(DMUs)in situations involving multiple criteria.The novelty of this dissertation lies in its combination of various established methodological concepts into unique frameworks to comprehensively assess sustainability performance.These proposed frameworks are,therefore,applied to measure Africa’s sustainability performance.In this regard,the thesis quantifies individual African countries’ relative efficiency and performance toward achieving sustainability.It provides valuable insights into countries and regions that excel in sustainability practices(benchmarks identification)and those that require further improvements.It also assists policymakers in narrowing technology gaps and promoting continent-wide sustainability.The dissertation measure sustainability in Africa through three Chapters.Chapter 2 assesses the level of sustainability in Africa by measuring the simultaneous achievement of economic prosperity and environmental performance under the concepts of natural and managerial disposability and gauging technology inequality across African countries.Chapter 3 investigates sustainability by measuring Africa’s energy and emission efficiencies,testing their convergence,measuring technology inequality across countries,identifying the barriers to technology diffusion,and exploring the factors influencing the continent’s energy and emission efficiency convergence.Chapter 4 assesses sustainability through the perspective of human development performance and investigates inefficiencies within the holistic system generating human development in Africa.The findings of this research reveal that although the unified efficiency of African countries improved slightly,there is still much room for improvement in terms of economic prosperity and environmental performance.Governments should therefore consider environmental protection and sustainability promotion while promoting economic prosperity.The results also show room for energy saving and emission reduction and strong evidence of convergence in energy and emission efficiencies in Africa.Governments and business leaders should invest more resources in clean production technology and increase the utilization of renewable energy solutions,as the continent is rich in renewable energy sources.Moreover,this study revealed heterogeneity in achieving sustainability among countries and regions,with disparities in efficiency level and persistent technology inequality indicating a low contribution of environmental technological advancements to the continent’s sustainability.Lastly,this thesis highlights that sub-Saharan Africa failed to improve the overall performance of the human development system during the study period,with the education division appearing as the primary source of the system’s inefficiency.However,the lowefficiency level across three human development divisions(education,health,and economics)suggests that all divisions should be prioritized to improve the system’s overall performance and achieve sustainable development.