European Investment Promotion in Africa as a Counter-Migration Initiative?

The so called “European Migrant Crisis” of 2015 has renewed the attention of European leaders, and especially the German government, for Africa. The ambitious goal of Germany’s “Marshall Plan for Africa” is to support private sector activity on the continent and ultimately reduce unwanted migration to Europe. This book offers a review of the “economic development against migration” narrative with a focus on Germany. Starting out from a macro-perspective it first looks at the general relationship between foreign direct investment and economic development in Africa. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is used to analyze a sample of country-level data. A second part more granularly explores the perspective of the German private sector and how growth and investments would influence migration from Africa to Europe. For this purpose, a qualitative content analysis of 31 semi-structured expert interviews was conducted. The book concludes with an analysis of Special Economic Zones that have become a widely supported policy instrument to attract investment and create jobs. Out of the full sample of African zones, 11 are investigated in detail drawing on interviews, field research and a Geographic Information System (GIS) change detection analysis.