Previous studies on export diversification show that Sub-Saharan African countries are at the lowest end in export diversification in the world.Recent literature also indicates the importance of export sophistication on economic development.This raises an important question whether export sophistication contributes to the income improvement in Sub-Saharan African.The paper examines the causal effect of export sophistication on income in Sub-Saharan Africa with panel data.By employing instrumental variables techniques and heteroskedasticity identification strategy that correct for endogeneity bias, the findings show that within-country variations in export sophistication lead to income growth.That is, a 1 percentage point increase in the export sophistication index is associated with an increase of GDP per capita of approximately 0.08 percentage points in the long-run.