Al-Hikmah University Journal

This study investigated the impact of government expenditure on economic growth in selected African countries between 1996 and 2020. Data were sourced from WDI, IMF and WGI. The dependent variable, economic growth was proxied by the percentage annual growth of RGDP while the explanatory variables of primary interest are total government expenditure to GDP and the six governance indicators. The specific objectives are to examine the effects of total government expenditure and governance indicators on economic growth. Panel Autoregressive Distributive Lag (PARDL) and suitable remedial measures were adopted whenever such tests indicated econometric problems despite the inbuilt mechanism of the PARDL software. Following the above methodology, the findings highlight the fact that the total government expenditure that does not interact has a positive effect on economic growth. In contrast, the effects of its interacted form are found to be clearer only in the case of government effectiveness and control of corruption indicators in the long run. Based on the findings, the study recommends that the regulatory authorities should always take cognizance of promoting a high quality of governance, especially government effectiveness and control of corruption for stimulating the positive effect of total government expenditure