The impact of infrastructure investment on economic growth in countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative: A comparative analysis between Africa and Asia

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) key element is to accelerate infrastructure investment, which, in turn, improves the connectivity and enhances trade and foreign direct investment of BRI-participating countries. Thus, this study attempts to investigate and compare the impact of infrastructure investment on the economic growth of the African and Asian BRI-participating countries. The results reveal that infrastructure development imposed negative and significant impact on both African and Asian regions' economic growth in the long-run. Conversely, the findings reveal a bi-directional Granger causality between economic growth and infrastructure development in both African and Asian regions in the short run. Nevertheless, the accumulation of capital formation only imposed a significant positive impact on the economic growth of the Asian region. As a result, policymakers from each region could exchange ideas on spurring economic growth of respective regions. However, they should formulate different policies to reap the BRI benefits.