Impact of urbanization and economic growth on environmental quality in western africa: Do manufacturing activities and renewable energy matter? Hassan Radoine 1 , Salwa Bajja 1 *, Jerome Chenal 2 and Zahoor Ahmed 3,4 1 Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, UM6P, School of Architecture Planning and Design SAP+D, Ben Guerir, Morocco, 2 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, Lausanne, Suisse, 3 Department of Accounting and Finance, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Cyprus International University, Nicosia, Turkey, 4 Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management Sciences, ILMA University, Karachi, Pakistan The countries in Western Africa have the greatest potential for renewable energy generation in the world and are likely to be vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Unfortunately, only a few of them have tapped into this potential, as non-renewable energy still dominates the total energy mix of these countries. The present study explores the effect of economic growth, manufacturing value-added, urbanization, financial development, foreign direct investment, and renewable energy consumption on the environmental quality in West African countries by using a sample of some selected countries over the period 1991–2018. This study is analyzed by adopting the method of Driscoll- Kraay (DK) panel regression. The panel result suggests that manufacturing value-added, urbanization, financial development, and foreign direct investment increase environmental degradation. In addition, the findings of this study reveal that economic growth and renewable energy consumption contribute, significantly, to environmental quality. Bidirectional causality exists between economic growth and CO 2 emissions and between urbanization and environmental degradation. Accordingly, in order to improve environmental quality in these countries, it is imperative to embrace and promote the consumption of clean energy sources, which will contribute more to the promotion and adoption of renewables in this strategic region. KEYWORDS urbanisation, renewable energy, west africa, manufacturing value added, CO 2 emission, financial development, economic growth OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Atif Jahanger, Hainan University, China REVIEWED BY Muhammad Usman, Wuhan University, China Joshua Chukwuma Onwe, Federal Polytechnic Ohodo, Nigeria *CORRESPONDENCE Salwa Bajja, salwa.bajja@um6p.ma SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Environmental Economics and Management, a section of the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science RECEIVED 04 August 2022 ACCEPTED 15 August 2022 PUBLISHED 13 September 2022 CITATION Radoine H, Bajja S, Chenal J and Ahmed Z (2022), Impact of urbanization and economic growth on environmental quality in western africa: Do manufacturing activities and renewable energy matter? Front. Environ. Sci. 10:1012007. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2022.1012007 COPYRIGHT © 2022 Radoine, Bajja, Chenal and Ahmed. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Frontiers in Environmental Science frontiersin.org 01 TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 13 September 2022 DOI 10.3389/fenvs.2022.1012007