Unravelling the role of renewable energy, information and communication technology and agricultural credit for sustainable agricultural productivity in developing countries

ABSTRACT

Enhancing agricultural productivity in developing countries is crucial for attaining the sustainable development goal 2.4 by 2030 through integrating information and communication technology (ICT) and renewable energy. Thus, this study investigates the role of ICT, renewable energy, and agricultural credit in enhancing agricultural productivity in developing countries from 2000 to 2021. This study has used the ‘Driscoll-Kraay and the Method of Moments Quantile Regression’ for robust empirical analysis. The estimated results indicate that renewable energy, ICT, and agricultural credit can enhance agricultural productivity in developing countries. The robustness analysis, however, indicates that the moderation effects of the interaction of ICT with renewable energy and agricultural credit with ICT and renewable energy have a weak and insignificant effect on agricultural productivity over the increasing quantiles. From a policy viewpoint, it is suggested that coherent and effective policies be implemented to encourage the advancement of formal credit institutions to bridge the gap between farmers and lending institutions offering flexible lending options to farmers. Thus, this helps farmers to access and deploy modern technologies and renewable energy in the agricultural field, which ensures sustainable agricultural practices to foster agricultural productivity while enriching environmental quality in developing countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Agricultural productivity
• ICT
• renewable energy
• sustainable goals
• developing countries

Abbreviations

AGP	=	Agricultural Productivity
ARDL	=	Autoregressive Distributed Lag
CADF	=	Cross-Sectional Augmented Dickey-Fuller
CIPS	=	Cross-Sectional Augmented Im-Pesaran-Shin
CSD	=	Cross Sectional Dependence
DSK	=	Driscoll-Kraay Standard Error
FAO	=	Food and Agricultural Organization
ICT	=	Information and communication technologies
ITU	=	International Telecommunication Union
MMQR	=	Methods of Moment Quantile Regression
REN	=	Renewable Energy
SDG	=	Sustainable Development Goal
VIF	=	Variance Inflation Factor
WDI	=	World Development Indicators

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).