THE REDUCTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION IN AFRICA: ICT AND CO2 EMISSIONS

The level of CO2 emissions is under constant examination by many scholars. This is because the level of growth of the world population, of the ICT sector and therefore the ever-increasing economic development of the planet contribute significantly to increase CO2 emissions and energy consumption. Despite the fact that technological advances and nations all over the world expect solutions capable of making cities, means of transport, intelligent electrical systems and industrial processes and anti-pollution measures with stringent regulations capable of generating an ever lower environmental impact, the level of global pollution emissions continues to grow. The purpose of this study is examine how the level of CO2 emissions grows with population growth and whether this can be related to the level of industrialization of a country. This will be done taking into account the investments in the ICT sector and other variables implemented in the study. To achieve this goal, after choosing South Africa for the completeness of the information being analyzed, we use a data set containing all the information on the variables analyzed for South Africa and distributed over a period of 42 years. The results of the empirical study confirm the relationship between CO2 emissions and demographic growth, but above all the level of energy use, showing that developing countries over a period of 50 years will have significant increases in pollution. Keywords: CO2 emissions, ICT, developing economies, developed economies