Electricity and Economic Growth in Cameroon

This book examines the relationship between electricity and economic growth in Cameroon. To do so, we used the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method to build our model, which is divided into two regressions. The first regression examines the function GDP = f(Electricity Production), covering the period from 1993 to 2010, with the hypothesis H1: an increase in electricity production leads to an increase in real GDP. The second regression, meanwhile, examines the function GDP = f(Electricity Losses), covering the period from 2000 to 2010, with the hypothesis H2: a reduction in electricity losses leads to an increase in real GDP. All of this data was collected from AES-Sonel, the National Institute of Statistics (INS), the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEE), and the Cameroon Electricity Authority (SIE). Using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method mentioned above, we observe in the first regression that there is indeed a positive relationship between real GDP growth and electricity production, as a 1 MWh increase in electricity production leads to a 2.14-point rise in real GDP. This confirms hypothesis H1.