Multinational enterprises in Africa: Corporate governance, social responsibility and risk management

Abstract

This dossier steams from a panel presented at the Fifth European Conference on African Studies in 2013 in Lisbon. We wanted to think about the consequences of the involvement of the multinationals in Africa. Indeed, foreign direct investment has increased in Africa and will constitute the first source of financial flow for the next year (OCDE, 2014) while the world trend has known a continuous decrease. Indeed, Africa is appealing for multinationals. It knows two-digits growth rates, has an economic potential to exploit (OCDE, 2011) and constitutes an emerging market for the multinationals, with the expansion of a middle class that has an increasing purchasing power (Tallio, 2013). On the other hand, the continent is still facing severe social problems, such as high rates of poverty and social inequality, and environmental carelessness. Multinationals act then in a complex environment. Governments, African citizens and the international public opinion are well aware of these contradictions and put pressure on the multinationals to measure and redress these imbalances (Forstater, Zadeck, Guang, Kelly, Hong & George, 2010) as they are seen as the cause of it or at least as having enough power to act efficiently on them.