Exploring the Role of Digital Payment Systems, Technological Innovation, and Financial Inclusion in Supporting SDG 2 and SDG 9: “Empirical Investigation into Sustainable Development Enablers”

Abstract

This thesis will examine the extent to which payment systems and technological access to payment enable financial inclusion to support implementation of Sustainable Development Goals-namely, SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure). The study uses panel data collected in the developing countries, and uses Cross-Selectional Augmented Auto regressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) in examination of the short-term and long-term relationships. Evidence generated by the empirical study shows that the digital payment systems are important in enhancing food security and industrial development to a greater extent by making more financial resources available, minimizing the cost of transaction and enhancing the transparency of agricultural and industrial resources allocation. The influence of technological innovation, expressed in the concept of precise farming, artificial intelligence integration, and intelligent infrastructure, is a positive effect on the productivity of agriculture and industrial efficiency. Financial interventions are also important as it offers financial assistance to smallholder farmers and micro-enterprises through access to credit, insurance and savings instruments so as to increase their involvement in the agricultural and industrial sector. Stable long-term equilibrium relations are confirmed by existence of cointegration between variables, and cross-sectional dependency tests point to the need of models, which incorporate those dependencies among countries. Along with that, the tests of diagnostics prove the validity of calculations without any indications of the auto correlation, specification, and non-normality. In the study, digital illiteracy, infrastructural set back, and policy inconsistency are considered major obstacles to maximize the rewards of such digital tools. Altogether, the study can provide meaningful guidance to policymakers as well as to development stakeholders regarding the integrated digital and financial approaches that might achieve inclusive growth and sustainable development, which correspond to SDG 2 and SDG 9.