KCG Policy Paper No. 9: Drivers and Extent of Foreign Direct Investment in Sub-Sahara Africa

Author: Holger Görg

When it comes to attracting foreign direct investment, Africa as a whole may be described as some-thing like the “forgotten continent”. In a global comparison, the continent is fairly insignificant as a destination for the investment of foreign companies. This paper makes this point using aggregate data on world-wide FDI stocks. It then tries to explain why this is the case. It first reviews the important drivers of FDI that have been identified in the literature, and then compares the performance of African countries in terms of those determinants with that of other potential host countries.