Two decades of foreign direct investment in Africa: a systematic literature review, integrative framework, and agenda for future research

Abstract

Despite the increase in research efforts on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in International Business (IB), the literature on FDI in Africa suffers from disintegration, theoretical boundaries and empirical vagueness, leaving important countenances uninvestigated. The purpose of this article is to reveal how much work has been done, what knowledge has been obtained, and what directions need to be taken for future FDI in Africa research. We conduct a systematic literature review of pertinent theoretical and empirical studies encompassing 105 articles from reputable management and economics journals on FDI in Africa. Our study contributes to this body of scholarship by identifying and discussing prior research, agglomerating them into themes, providing a structured debate about what is already known, as well as offering an explanation of why and how Africa is a distinctive context different from other emerging markets. We further develop an integrative framework that provides extensive knowledge of contemporary and promising avenues for future research.