Two Decades of International Business and International Management Scholarship on Africa: A Review and Future Directions

Although international business (IB) and international management (IM) research focusing on the African context has risen steadily in recent years, understanding of the genesis and evolution of this burgeoning corpus of literature is still limited. To address this gap, we quantify and evaluate 2 decades of Africa-focused research published in leading IB and IM journals by mapping publishing trends; offering insights into sample characteristics; and highlighting prominent theories, research design, and significant data analysis techniques employed in Africa-focused publications. We augment the insights gleaned from this systematic endeavor with a bibliometric analysis, which includes analyzing citation records, authorship patterns, and the underlying conceptual and intellectual evolution of this literature. The findings indicate that Africa-focused IB and IM research from 2002 to 2021 has coalesced around four major thematic clusters: (1) economic structures, institutional practices, and corporate social responsibility; (2) the Ubuntu philosophy and management strategies; (3) entrepreneurship; and (4) corporate governance. Building on these foundational themes, we propose distinct research directions for future researchers interested in studying the African context.