Foreign Direct Investment, a blessing, or a burden for African states in terms of corruption?

Sammanfattning: The development in Africa has for a long time been harmed because of its high corruption levels. During the last decades, Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) have increasingly flown into African states as an attempt to strengthen the societies. Therefore, this thesis has investigated what kind of impact FDI between 1975 and 2000 has had on corruption levels in Africa. Through a hypothesis testing approach using a mixed method, a positive correlation between FDI and corruption is established, meaning more incoming FDI leads to lower corruption. Due to the mixed conclusions of previous scholars, this thesis has taken a narrower approach and investigated Botswana and Zambia, according to a most similar design. The comparative case study indicates that Botswana has better than Zambia absorbed FDI into the society, which appears to be a central component in its relationship to corruption. Furthermore, the study implies that state fragility impacts the extent FDI influences corruption, which is demonstrated through Botswana’s higher level of authority, capacity, and legitimacy compared to Zambia’s. Another two factors analyzed are which countries and sectors Botswana and Zambia have received FDI from and within, which has disadvantaged Zambia due to the large amount of FDI stemming from authoritarian China.