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The study aims to address poverty eradication efforts globally and promote sustainable development goals (viz., SDGs 1 and 8), specifically focusing on improving quality of life, population optimization, job creation, and economic growth. The research investigates the increasing poverty rates in Sub‐Saharan Africa and analyses the role of population, unemployment, and quality of life in 18 selected countries from 2002 to 2019. The study employs the novel panel quantile autoregressive distributed lag method (PQARDL) developed by Chishti and Retish (2023) to address complex econometric challenges. The findings indicate that unemployment significantly contributes to short‐ and long‐term poverty across all market situations (bearish, normal, and bullish). Conversely, population growth significantly discourages poverty across African economies in the short and long term. These effects are observed in the case of remittances and GDP. Interestingly, the impact of infant mortality and life expectancy on poverty remains insignificant in the short term. Still, life expectancy discourages poverty in the long term, while infant mortality increases poverty in bearish, normal, and bullish market situations. As a result, unemployment and population growth are important factors determining poverty in Sub‐Saharan Africa. The study discusses policy directions based on these findings to address poverty effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy poverty plagues the sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) region and impedes its socio‐economic development. It is impossible to attain sustainable‐development without alleviating energy‐poverty. In this study, we examine the role of governance and renewable‐energy in alleviating energy poverty for 22 SSA countries from 2000 to 2018 using system generalised method‐of‐moments and three‐stage least‐squares models. Government expenditure is found to increase economic growth, which in turn, reduces energy poverty. On the other hand, energy poverty is found to initially increase and then fall with rising renewable‐energy share. Additionally, the association of energy poverty with socio‐economic, environmental and governance factors, is analysed within a structural‐equation modelling (SEM) framework. Our SEM model shows that government institutional‐factors remain central to reducing energy poverty without compromising environmental‐sustainability. This study suggests that SSA needs transparent governance, strong institutions and a rising renewable‐energy share along with a resilient grid infrastructure to address the energy poverty problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]