Evaluating Foreign Direct Investment and Africa’s Development

Abstract

The question of Africa’s development has continued to occupy the front burner from the social and economic discussions by scholars of various divides. But Africa’s development through foreign direct investment has become a recent challenge to the African continent. African social critics and commentators as well as Western scholars have attributed the seeming slow pace of development in Africa to several factors discouraging foreign direct investment. Suggestions and literature on how to overcome these factors abound; all calling on African states to provide the enabling environment for foreign investors under this arrangement to help in solving Africa’s socio-economic problems. In this essay, we adopt the method of analysis and argue that rather than blame African states for the underperformance of foreign direct investment, policy makers should be more humanistic in entering into economic agreement with the advanced countries of the world and ensure that such agreements accommodate certain positive values of the host continent. It therefore concludes that with interculturalism as the foundation of any economic solution to Africa’s development problem, whether external or homegrown, Africans would appreciate and participate more in development activities that concern them.