Kick-Starting FDI in Africa

African leaders must attract hundreds of billions of dollars in FDI to alleviate poverty.

In the United Nations’ 2020 World Investment Report , Secretary-General António Guterres noted that global foreign direct investment (FDI) this year is ‘expected to fall sharply from 2019 levels of $1.5 trillion’ to below the trough it hit during the global financial crisis. This decline will have a devastating effect on emerging economies, many of which are already in crisis as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.