This book provides a detailed look at the birth, growth and expansion of African Multinational Enterprises (AMNEs). Specifically, it explores the historical, ideological, political and macroeconomics forces that shaped modern day Africa and the role they play in fostering the emergence and growth of AMNEs. It also examines some of the challenges these enterprises have faced in this venture including poor infrastructure, deficient supply chains, and opaque institutional and regulatory frameworks and the innovative ways by which they overcame them. In this way, this book provides practitioners and students with not only a detailed insight into AMNEs but also their potential competitive advantage in the international business stage.

This book provides a detailed look at the birth, growth and expansion of African Multinational Enterprises (AMNEs). Specifically, it explores the historical, ideological, political and macroeconomics forces that shaped modern day Africa and the role they play in fostering the emergence and growth of AMNEs. It also examines some of the challenges these enterprises have faced in this venture including poor infrastructure, deficient supply chains, and opaque institutional and regulatory frameworks and the innovative ways by which they overcame them. In this way, this book provides practitioners and students with not only a detailed insight into AMNEs but also their potential competitive advantage in the international business stage.

The dynamics of the world’s pervasive digital technologies is transforming organisations and enabling enterprises to create sustainable competitive advantage. This presents huge economic opportunities for Africa. This book responds to the need for African enterprises and organisations—particularly those in the service sector—to fully exploit the inherent potential in digital platforms by putting in place processes to respond effectively to changing consumer demands. Digital service delivery is conceptualised as a key driver of effective management and service delivery across the value chain of businesses. The authors offer insights into the opportunities, drivers, structures, and models of digital service delivery specific to the African context, using case studies and country-based themes that highlight how the adoption of digital platforms and practices can transform service delivery for value-creation. The book examines the scope and applications of digital businesses, emphasising the emergence, value-creation, and strategic implications for Africa’s private and public enterprises. Students, entrepreneurs, IT innovators, academics, and policymakers will gain a greater understanding of how digitalisation is shaping consumer expectations, industry practices, and service delivery in Africa.

Delving into the phenomenology of corruption and its impacts on the governance of societies, this cutting edge Encyclopedia considers what makes corruption such a resilient, complex, and global priority for study. This title contains one or more Open Access entries.

Illuminates the path to more generative urban transitions in Africa's cities and developing rural areas Africa is the world's most rapidly urbanizing region. The predominantly rural continent is currently undergoing an “urban revolution” unlike any other, generally taking place without industrialization and often characterized by polarization, poverty, and fragmentation. While many cities have experienced construction booms and real estate speculation, others are marked by expanding informal economies and imploding infrastructures. The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition examines the imbalanced and contested nature of the ongoing urban transition of Africa. Edited and authored by leading experts on the subject, this unique volume develops an original theory conceptualizing cities as sociotechnical systems constituted by production, consumption, and infrastructure regimes. Throughout the book, in-depth chapters address the impacts of current meta-trends—global geopolitical shifts, economic changes, the climate crisis, and others—on Africa's cities and the broader development of the continent. Presents a novel framework based on extensive fieldwork in multiple countries and regions of the continent Examines geopolitical and socioeconomic topics such as manufacturing in African cities, the green economy in Africa, and the impact of China on urban Africa Discusses the prospects for generative urbanism to produce and sustain long-term development in Africa Features high-quality maps, illustrations, and photographs The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in geography, urban planning, and African studies, academic researchers, geographers, urban planners, and policymakers.

How can Africa, the world’s most lagging region, benefit from globalisation and achieve sustained economic growth? Africa needs greater investment by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) to improve competitiveness and generate more growth through positive spill-over effects. Despite the fact that Africa’s returns on investment averaged 29% since 1990, Africa has gained merely 1% of global Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows. The challenge for African countries is how to be a more desirable destination for FDI. The study integrates three currents of economic research, namely from the literature on (endogenous) economic growth, convergence and regional integration, the explanations for Africa’s poor growth and the growing understanding of the role of MNEs in a global economy. The empirical side of the book is based on an econometric study of the determinants of FDI in Africa as well as a detailed firm-level survey conducted in 2000.

This book provides a detailed look at the birth, growth and expansion of African Multinational Enterprises (AMNEs). Specifically, it explores the historical, ideological, political and macroeconomics forces that shaped modern day Africa and the role they play in fostering the emergence and growth of AMNEs. It also examines some of the challenges these enterprises have faced in this venture including poor infrastructure, deficient supply chains, and opaque institutional and regulatory frameworks and the innovative ways by which they overcame them. In this way, this book provides practitioners and students with not only a detailed insight into AMNEs but also their potential competitive advantage in the international business stage.

British multinationals faced unprecedented challenges to their organizational legitimacy in the middle of the twentieth century as the European colonial empires were dismantled and institutional transformations changed colonial relationships in Africa and other parts of the world. This book investigates the political networking and internal organizational changes in five British multinationals (United Africa Company, John Holt & Co., Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, Bank of West Africa and Barclays Bank DCO). These firms were forced to adapt their strategies and operations to changing institutional environments in two English-speaking West African countries, Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) and Nigeria, from the late 1940s to the late 1970s. Decolonization meant that formerly imperial businesses needed to develop new political networks and change their internal organization and staffing to promote more Africans to managerial roles. This postcolonial transition culminated in indigenization programmes (and targeted nationalizations) which forced foreign companies to sell equity and assets to domestic investors in the 1970s. Postcolonial Transition and Global Business History is the first in-depth historical study on how British firms sought to adapt over several decades to rapid political and economic transformation in West Africa. Exploring both postcolonial transitions and development discourse, this book addresses the topics with regard to business and economic history and will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of organizational change, political economy, African studies and globalization.