Do Public-Private Partnership Investments Influence Poverty in Southern African Economies? A Panel VAR Approach

As Southern African economies continue to struggle with achieving Sustainable Development Goal 1 (eradicating poverty), there is an increasing need for strong collaboration between public and private sectors to accomplish this goal, as the public sector cannot achieve it alone. Based on this, this study examines the influence of public-private partnership investments (PPPI) on poverty and its severity in Southern African economies from 2000 to 2019. We employed the Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) model approach. The PPPI was categorized into investments in energy and transport. We find that the contributions of PPPI in energy and transport to the reduction of poverty and its severity are extremely small, suggesting that PPPI in these sectors has a negligible immediate effect on poverty and its severity. The study recommends long-term PPPI strategies in energy and transport to reduce poverty and its severity by enhancing accessible and affordable infrastructures in these sectors and beyond. Theoretically, this work pioneers the systematic application of the Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) model to sectoral Public-Private Partnership Investments (PPPI) and confirms that poverty persistence in the region is consistent with Poverty Trap theories; politically, it provides crucial evidence compelling Southern African governments to adopt long-term, integrated strategies that address structural inequalities and policy coherence beyond short-term infrastructure investments.