Search

Considering the uneven geography of foreign direct investment in Africa, this article examines political, demographic and infrastructural factors that have led six countries – Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, the Gambia, Guinea Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe – to be the least attractive territories to the external capital. This paper investigates the extent to which political stability, qualification of labor, potential consumer market, regional integration, and infrastructure play a central role in attracting investments. It also debates Geography's role in investigating African countries' particularities to avoid common generalizations, which are still disseminated by Afro-Optimism and Afro-Pessimist perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent growth of most African economies has led to the development of numerous analyzes that conditioned the phenomenon in question to the Chinese economic dynamism. However, in addition to the evident influence of the Asian country - which operates in Africa through bilateral agreements, loans and different types of investments - it is also necessary to raise what are the specific conditions of the productive forces of the 54 African socio-spatial formations today. The understanding of these specificities - as well as the idle capacities of their territories - is the primary vector for directing the Foreign Direct Investments, which reveal the architecture of economic interests between African heads of state and the rest of the world, beyond China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]