While global studies on the relationship between democratic institutions and economic pros­perity are useful to derive general tendencies, a more insightful analysis is possible by inves­tigating smaller entities. In this study, we focus on a panel of African countries located in the Sub-Saharan region between 1995 and 2016, which provides a solid foundation for empirical analysis and allows for multi-facetted interpretation, especially considering that we observe instability of democratic structures in some parts of this country duster. The study employs a composite index for measuring democratic institutions. This approach is especially insightful since it takes interrelations between political, economic and societal institutions into account that tend to be overlooked in many studies, which estimate effects of single indicators only. As of now, we find that societal institutions are the most conductive to growth in the region.