Title: Foreign Direct Investments in Africa with a focus on Cocoa Production

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and cocoa production in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries for the period 1997-2017. The fixed effect regression results confirm a positive and strongly significant association between Percapita FDI and cocoa production. The results are robust to many model specifications. The findings suggest the need for FDI expansion in the cocoa sector in Africa which is a major contributor to the economy of cocoa producing countries in Africa. This research advocates the use of disaggregated sectoral FDI inflows as a recommendation for future research to help establish effective policies relevant to the sectors. Further the research recommends that causality in the relationship between cocoa production and FDI be investigated in future.