Abstract

The world has progressively become a global village and most economic activities in today’s world embrace digitisation. Digitisation is gradually being appreciated in West Africa but its impact on youth unemployment is relatively unknown. Thus, this study aims at filling this research gap by measuring digitisation in two perspectives; internet penetration rate and mobile telephone subscription. The Im-Pesaran-Shin (IPS) unit-root test affirms that the data are suitable for panel ARDL estimation technique. The estimation establishes that youth unemployment, digitisation and the control variables are cointegrated. This study also reveals that digitisation could reduce youth unemployment in West Africa, both at the short-and long-run but not convincing due to low appreciation of digital technologies. In the short-run, the result is consistent in some countries but not same and robust in some others. Thus, the paper concludes that increasing digitisation would enhance employment opportunities for the youths in the West African region.

摘要

世界已逐渐成为地球村，当今世界上大多数经济活动都在进行数字化。数字化在西非逐渐受到人们的欢迎，但是它对青年失业的影响相对未知。因此，本研究旨在通过从两个角度衡量数字化来填补这一研究空白。互联网普及率和移动电话订阅。Im-Pesaran-Shin（IPS）单位根测试确认该数据适用于面板ARDL估计技术。该估计确定青年失业，数字化和控制变量是协整的。这项研究还表明，数字化可以在短期和长期内减少西非的青年失业，但由于对数字技术的欣赏程度低，因此无法令人信服。从短期看，在某些国家，结果是一致的，但在另一些国家，结果却不一样，而且很稳健。因此，本文得出结论，日益数字化将为西非地区的年轻人增加就业机会。