Indian Foreign Direct Investment: A Way to Africa

Indian companies are entering into African domain largely guided by the market and resource seeking motives which promotes potential forward and backward linkage. Indian FDI to Africa is concentrated in oil, gas and mining in the primary commodities market. In the manufacturing sector, a dominance of automobile and pharmaceutical firms is seen. Most of the Indian FDI in African countries is through Greenfield investments and joint ventures that are desired by the host countries due to their contribution in creating new production capacity and generating employment, transfer of technology, etc. The identified factors that motivate Indian investors to invest in Africa are socio-cultural, host country policies, regional integration agreements, bilateral investment treaties, gross domestic product growth etc. Also language, culture, presence of Diaspora does play a significant role in attracting FDI in Africa countries. The relationship between India and Africa exists and functions at these multilateral levels that includes commerce converge. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.