Institutional Thresholds, Multidimensional SDG Performance, and the Structural Determinants of Development Gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains the most off-track region for achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet existing analyses rarely examine how institutional quality conditions the effectiveness of structural drivers across multiple SDG dimensions simultaneously. This study investigates the institutional threshold effects that determine whether economic growth, human capital investment, infrastructure expansion, and financial development translate into measurable SDG progress across 25 SSA economies over the period 2000-2023. Employing a panel threshold regression framework alongside fixed-effects and system-GMM estimations, we identify a governance quality threshold below which structural investments yield negligible SDG gains - a trap that affects 17 of 25 sample countries.