UN opens workshop on increasing investment flows to Africa

With the harmonization of data related to foreign direct investment (FDI) seen as crucial to increasing such flows to and between African countries, a United Nations-sponsored workshop to help the continent’s specialists strengthen management capability is under way in Ethiopia.

The workshop is sponsored by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and Germany’s InWEnt Capacity Building International so that African countries may more effectively collect and analyze FDI-related information, and better target their economic policies.

“Strategic dialogue and interaction between the policy makers in most countries of the region on FDI has also been virtually absent,” an UNCTAD representative told the gathering in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. “As a result, African countries are not able to rapidly respond to the changing global investment environment.”

Africa exported $1.3 billion of FDI in 2003, proportionately about a tenth of total FDI inflows to the region. In the absence of accurate and reliable information, national investment policies continue to focus mostly on non-African sources of FDI. But as Africa’s economies grow and regional integration improves, opportunities are increasing for intra-African FDI to increase.

Countries participating include Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.