FDI: Modern Chains and Shackles

Every developing country’s government, and ours is no exception, loves to chant buzzwords like FDI, investor confidence, and favourable investment climate like some economic gospel. The rhetoric creates the illusion that foreign investors are benevolent patrons here to inject capital and uplift the economy.

The reality is far less romantic. Investors are here for one reason only. Profit. Nothing more, nothing less. More wealth is drained from this continent through profit extraction, tax avoidance, and outright exploitation than we will ever see from so-called investment.

This is not development. It is the outsourcing of economic sovereignty, packaged with a smile and a press release. That is the hard truth we need to face if we are serious about changing Africa’s economic reality.

Andrew Sardanis captured it better than I ever could in his book A Venture in Africa: The Challenges of African Business. He offered this timely warning:

“And the new colonisers, otherwise known as foreign direct investment? I have a cynical view. First of all, they are almost above the law. Unfortunately, the foreign direct investment gospel is so deeply embedded in the minds of African governments that foreign investors are given carte blanche to do pretty much whatever they want. The big ones dictate their own terms anyway, such as the mining companies in Zambia and other parts of Africa, the big companies in South Africa, and the oil companies in Nigeria and Angola and elsewhere. The smaller ones come in on the coat tails of the foreign direct investment preachers. They display unbelievable bravado for their size. They ignore rules that do not suit them and adjust others to their convenience. And they do not encounter much resistance from the governments, which have been brainwashed to accommodate the whims of foreign investors.”

The question now is how much longer we will continue playing along? How much longer will we keep praying to the false gods of foreign capital while our people remain poor, our industries remain underdeveloped, and our natural resources get hauled out to enrich someone else’s economy?

Africa cannot build real economic power while acting as a cheap resource pit and an open-air market for foreign profit seekers. It is time we stop playing host to economic hitmen dressed up as investors, rebuild state capacity, and start putting African interests first. If we do not, this cycle of extraction and dependency will define us for generations to come.