scholarly journals More Equitable Britain-Africa Relations Post-Brexit: Doomed to Fail?

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Kohnert

High-flying illusions on the part of the proponents and grim predictions on the part of the sceptics have characterised the controversy around Brexit. The article assesses five key issues at stake for post-Brexit relationships between Britain, the EU, and Africa: market access, foreign direct investment (FDI), aid, security, and the nature of the partnership. The analysis focuses on those sub-Saharan African countries that belong to the Commonwealth, as the British government's vision of a “Global Britain” relies heavily on its reinforced cooperation with Commonwealth nations. The review of potential developments in these different policy fields shows that the expectations of Brexiteers and African politicians alike concerning an enhanced, partnership-like post-Brexit Commonwealth relationship are largely unfounded. Although the post-Brexit United Kingdom will increase African countries' choices regarding preferred trading partners, it remains questionable whether London could offer something new that other global players with increasing interest in Africa, such as China, do not already have on their agenda.

Author(s):  
Yao HongXing ◽  
Winfred Okoe Addy ◽  
Samuel Kofi Otchere ◽  
Robert Yao Aaronson ◽  
Jean-Jacques Dominique Beraud

The study aims to assess the impact of terrorism activities on foreign direct investment in a panel study of 33 Sub-Saharan African countries. In order to achieve the objective of the study, it employed panel data methodologies such as GLS random-effect, ML random-effect, fixed effect regression, generalized linear model and multivariate regression methods to enable it make statistically and robust inference or conclusion. However, the study found that there is an inverse linear relationship or impact on foreign direct investment in Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, the study found out that economic growth and foreign direct investment are inversely related and corruption control has positive and direct linear relationship with foreign direct investment. As the study focused on the linear relationship of terrorism activities and foreign direct investments, it recommends further studies into the subject-matter by employing the non-linear approaches to ascertain the non-linear relationship between the two.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lateef Ademola Olatunji ◽  
Muhammad Sadiq Shahid

<p>Although it may seem natural to argue that foreign direct investment (FDI) can convey great advantages to host countries. This paper finds that FDI flows to Sub-Saharan Africa economies unaffected by conflict and political instability exceed those with crisis. For FDI to strive in these countries, it must introduce sound economic policies and make the country investor friendly. There must be political stability, sound economic management and well developed infrastructure.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Indra de Soysa

AbstractScholars debate the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on poor societies. Apparently, FDI could embolden governments to securitize rather than reform, an argument put forth recently by (Kishi, Roudabeh, Maggio, Guiseppe, & Raleigh, Clionadh. (2017). Foreign investment and state conflicts in Africa. Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, 23(3), https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2017-0007) who supply evidence within a sample of Sub Saharan African countries showing that FDI increases the number of conflict events. This study takes a critical view of their argument on conceptual and methodological grounds. Using new data for the entire world as well as a sample of developing countries, this study directly tests securitization as militarization measured as military spending and the size of armed forces and finds that several alternative measurements of the stock and flow of FDI reduces militarization, results that are robust to fixed effects estimations, Heckman selection models, and models with and without controls for ongoing armed conflict and interstate tension. Testing an Africa-only sample yields no statistically significant effects either way, but compared to the global sample, an interaction of FDI in Africa does show a positive effect. This result, however, is substantively very slight compared with the net effect of the African region where military spending is unusually greater than in other regions, but size of armed forces are smaller. These results are replicated using a measure of societal security capturing more than just the absence of war as measured by the World Economic Forum’s data. If FDI increases security without increasing militarization, then FDI is potentially a sound source of finance for poor countries. Case-study-based research might usefully unpack the political economy of defence spending in Africa and identify precisely how TNCs can be implicated in the story. Our results show, however, that generally, FDI might actually reduce militarization while increasing societal security beyond just the absence of armed violence.


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