Foreign Direct Investment and the Development of Neo-Colonial Economies: A Survey Approach

In their search for sustainable development and endurable development strategies, neo-colonial economies of the Third World and Africa in particular gloss over massive corruption in public office and sit-tight syndrome of leaders. Rather, since attaining independence in the 1950s and 60s, their leaders have tinkered with several development strategies drawn from both the capitalists and socialist models. In all of these, development has remained a far cry as a result of many challenges faced by these economies. Strategies ranging from indigenization to export promotion and import substitution of the 1960s, to privatization and structural adjustment of the 1980s and Foreign Direct Investment of the 1990s have been experimented with varying degrees of success. Little has been done in the area of checking financial corruption and abuse of office by public office holders, building of strong institutions from which economic oriented strategies can be rooted and checking tenure elongation by leaders of states. The results have been huge failures and frustration on the part of development partners. This paper has attempted a survey approach to Foreign Direct Investment as a way out of structural imbalances of neo-colonial economies. Basing this examination on Nigeria, findings have shown that Foreign Direct Investment can work for development only if host government regulate the activities of foreign investors and also create enabling environment for investment to yield expected results.