Market entry into Africa: Acquisitions and international joint ventures. Studies of foreign firms' market entry strategies, challenges, and performance in Africa

• Author: Richard A. Owusu,Nnamdi Oguji
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.22170
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021

INTRODUCTION

Market entry into Africa: Acquisitions and international joint

ventures. Studies of foreign firms' market entry strategies,

challenges, and performance in Africa

Nnamdi Oguji

1

| Richard A. Owusu

2

1

Department of Marketing, University of

Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland

2

School of Marketing and Communication,

Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden

Correspondence

Nnamdi Oguji, Department of Marketing,

University of Vaasa, P.O. Box 700, FI-65101

Vaasa, Finland.

Email: nnamdi.oguji@gmail.com

Abstract

While the interest in investing in Africa is rising, the know-how of business on the

continent is very limited. There have been only recently few special issues focusing

on sub-Saharan Africa in the top international business journals: “Sub-Saharan Africa

at a key inflection point”(Thunderbird International Business Review 2009); “Con-

temporary developments in the management of human resources in Africa”(Journal

of World Business 2011); “Contemporary challenges and opportunities of doing busi-

ness in Africa”(Journal of Technological Forecasting and Social Change 2016); “Criti-

cal perspectives on international business in Africa (Critical Perspectives on

International Business 2016); “Strategic Management in Africa (Global Strategy Jour-

nal, 2017); and “The internationalization of African firms (Thunderbird International

Business Review 2016). The aim of this special issue is to advance understanding of

international business in Africa and specifically focus on how foreign firms enter Afri-

can markets via acquisitions and international joint ventures and extend knowledge

of these market entry strategies and performance in Africa for research and for for-

eign firms intending to, or currently doing business in Africa. This guest editorial pro-

vides a summary of the five articles and one book review in this special issue

categorized into three broad thematic issues: International joint ventures and acquisi-

tions as market entry strategies in Africa; cross-border investments of African firms;

and theoretical underpinnings.

KEYWORDS

Market entry strategies into Africa, Acquisitions in Africa, International joint ventures in

Africa, Performance of acquisitions and joint ventures in Africa

1|INTRODUCTION

For the past 40 years, international business (IB) studies have focused

on explaining the internationalization of multinational enterprises

(MNEs) and the globalization of markets. Yet, studies focused on

Africa have thus far been limited. Although interest in investing in

Africa is increasing, even as five African economies were the world's

five fastest growing economies in the world in 2019 (IMF, 2019), the

know-how of business on the continent is still very limited for both

practitioners and researchers.

Theoretically, contextualized explanations improve theorizing in

IB studies (Meyer & Peng, 2005; Welch, Piekkari, Plakoyiannaki, &

Paavilainen-Möntymäki, 2011). As similar contextualization has been

done in transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (Meyer &

Peng, 2005), China (Child & Tse, 2001), and studies on strategies of

emerging market MNEs (Cuervo-Cazurra, 2012), we believe African

markets provide a unique context to test IB theories empirically and

develop context-specific theories (Van de Ven & Jing, 2011). The aim

of this special issue is to improve IB theories with contextualized stud-

ies by addressing two important entry mode choices for foreign firms

DOI: 10.1002/tie.22170

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