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Abstract

The paper examines the relationships among digital inclusion, financial inclusion and inclusive growth in Nigeria. In doing this, the ARDL bounds testing approach to analysis of short-run and long run relationships is employed to investigate the effect of digital inclusion on inclusive growth in Nigeria using annual time series data spanning the 1993-2023 period. The Toda-Yamamoto approach to Granger causality test is employed to investigate the causal relationship between financial inclusion and inclusive growth in the country using annual time series data spanning the 2007-2023 period. Empirical evidence from the bounds test indicates that digital inclusion significantly promotes inclusive growth in the country, while the evidence from the causality test indicates that financial inclusion causes inclusive growth uni-directionally (with no evidence of a feedback). The analysis also reveals that inflation and currency depreciation adversely affect inclusive growth in the country. Based on the evidence, the paper recommends efforts by the government to implement policies and programmes aimed at improving digital and financial inclusion, and reducing inflation and the nominal exchange rate to levels favourable to inclusive growth.