AI Readiness, Industrialisation and Sustainable Development in Africa: The Moderating Role of Government Effectiveness

This dataset is a balanced cross-country panel covering annual observations from 2020 to 2024. It links digital transformation and economic development by focusing on AI readiness and its association with industrial performance, institutional quality, and sustainable development outcomes. The data helps compare how countries prepare for AI adoption while tracking conventional macroeconomic and social indicators during the same period.

Country and time identifiers
• cid: Unique numeric country identifier for sorting and processing.
• countryname: Official country name.
• regionname: Geographic region classification (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa).
• incomelevelname: World Bank-style income group (e.g., Low Income, Lower Middle Income, Upper Middle Income).
• year: Observation year, from 2020 to 2024.

AI readiness indicators (independent variables)
• ai: Overall AI Readiness Score capturing national preparedness to adopt and deploy AI (strategy, ecosystem maturity, data readiness).
• govai: Government pillar, measuring public-sector commitment to AI (strategy, regulation, governance, ethics frameworks).
• techai: Technology pillar, capturing technology-sector maturity (innovation capacity, skills/human capital, startup and firm ecosystem).
• dataai: Data & infrastructure pillar, capturing foundations for AI (connectivity, telecom quality, digital infrastructure, data representativeness).

Institutional and economic metrics
• goveff: Government effectiveness indicator reflecting public service quality, civil service capacity, and policy design/implementation.
• ind: Industrial value added, measuring industrial sector output (manufacturing, mining, construction, utilities), typically as a share of GDP.
• sdg: SDG Index Score (0–100) capturing overall progress toward UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• gdppc: GDP per capita, proxy for average living standards and economic well-being.
• trade: Trade openness, exports plus imports of goods and services as a share of GDP, indicating global market integration.