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The amount of total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions emitted into the environment threatens both human and global ecosystems. Based on this background, this study first analyzed the relationship between gross domestic product (GDP) and CO2 emissions in five West African countries covering the period of 2007–2014 based on a panel data model. Our causality analysis revealed that there exists a unidirectional causality running from GDP to CO2 emissions. Second, after establishing the nexus between GDP and CO2 emissions, we forecast Africa’s CO2 emissions with the aim of projecting future consumption levels. With the quest to achieve climate change targets, realistic and high accuracy total CO2 emissions projections are key to drawing and implementing realizable environmentally-friendly energy policies. Therefore, we propose a non-assumption driven forecasting technique for long-term total CO2 emissions. We implement our bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) sequential algorithm formulation for both the testing stage (2006–2014) and forecasting stage (2015–2020) on Africa’s aggregated data as well as the five selected West African countries employed herein. We then propose policy recommendations based on the direction of causality between CO2 emissions and GDP, and our CO2 emissions projections in order to guide policymakers to implement realistic and sustainable policy targets for West Africa and Africa as a whole.

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For decades, researchers of tax systems and taxation as a whole are in a dilemma on the factors affecting taxpayers' noncompliant behaviors. Numerous experimental and survey results concluded by tax researchers have identified characteristics of noncompliant taxpayers because tax revenues are seen as a major source of income in funding government expenditures. Globalization has called for a huge demand for numerous public services thereby forcing governments into increasing tax revenues to finance these projects. The demand of public service by government and taxpayers shifts the burden of taxes to taxpayers. The gap between tax revenues and tax expenditures are swelling thereby ensuring unbalanced government budgets due to taxpayers' noncompliance. Understanding the causes of tax evasion calls for research into taxpayers' reasons for evading taxes. The main aim of the study is investigating factors that have a detrimental effect on tax evasion in Ghana. In coming out with such factors, this research employed multiple regression techniques and factor analysis. The empirical results obtained from the analysis revealed that taxation and fiscal factors, demographic factors, administrative factors and economics factors are the main factors that have a significant effect on the evasion of taxes.