Despite recent unfavourable headlines and opinions about the continent, Africa is expanding at its own rate. Because it is open for commerce, the continent was portrayed as being on the move in the introduction of a special journal edition a few years ago.
In his words, Dr. Olufemi Babarinde, a professor at the Department of Global Business, Thunderbird School of Global Management, Glendale, said, “It seemed African countries had not been on the radar screen of many non-African companies with global operations, let alone constituted prominent components of their global supply chain networks.
While several factors might have accounted for the marginalization of Africa by the global business community, perhaps the most critical was the seemingly incessant unflattering portrayal of the continent by Western media. African governments have been using a slew of tools and strategies to reform their economies and politics and to make the African business environment more business-friendly, and the non-African business community is availing itself of bursting business and investment opportunities in the continent.”
After more than a decade of articulating these views in an academic journal, Africa has been positioned to the world as a destination to be, do business, and invest. According to several sources, countries in the Global North have traded extensively with African countries. Information has it that countries in the Global South, particularly those in Asia and Latin America, do business and invest in Africa.
Our check also indicates that between 2004 and 2022, in addition to Africans who also sought information about opportunities on the continent, people from the rest of the world also searched the Internet for information on investment, small businesses, ideas, mining, remote work, exports, funding, and franchising within the business and industrial categories of the Google Trends.
Our analysis shows that the interest was mostly from St Helena, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Singapore, Pakistan, Ireland, India, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia, Philippines, Switzerland, United States, South Korea, Malaysia, Germany, Vietnam, Spain, Thailand, France, Indonesia, Italy, Brazil, and Turkiye during the people.
In our analysis, we found a strong link between the global public interest in opportunities in Africa and business summits organised on the continent during the period. The link was stronger between 2004 and 2010.
The trends of interest, according to our analysts, could be situated within the view of Professor Babarinde about tapping investment and business opportunities in Africa: global business executives and industry key players need to look beyond news headlines; “he or she must first be aware of them and, more importantly, know how to tap into them.”
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