Africa Foreign Investor Survey 2005 - unido

Madagascar and Ethiopia firms on average employed
the most people. Overall, firms located in Burkina Faso,
Guinea and Mozambique were significantly smaller
than the survey average. Annex table 3.5 gives a composite
ranking of average firm sizes referring to sales,
book value and employment together.
Figures 3.24 and annex table 3.4 give the size of firms
for the 18 ISIC groups. According to total value of sales,
firms in the food, beverage and tobacco sub-sector are
the largest, and with the large number of companies in
that sub sector as well, the sum is the highest.The next
two largest sub-sectors by sales are in the service sector:
transport and communication and marketing, sales,
and distribution. In the manufacturing sector, chemicals,
plastic and rubber sub sector is second to the food
sub sector in overall sales. Looking at size in terms of
number of workers (Fig. 3.24c) the manufacturing
firms with the highest average employment are in the
garments, apparel and leather sub-sector and textile sub
sector. Construction and agriculture sub-sectors are the
other two that consist of companies with large work
forces.
Figures 3.25–3.26 show the investors’ own overall
assessment of how their investments have performed
over the last three years in relation to the expectations
they had. For the whole group, 62 per cent feel their
investments have performed in line with or better than
their expectations.
At the country level the survey sample breaks down
into three country groups. The first group consists of
four countries – Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and the
United Republic of Tanzania – where more than 70 per
cent of firms have met foreign investors’ performance
expectations over the last three years. In particular, in
Malawi and in Uganda, about the 30 per cent of the
investors had results above expectations. The second
and largest group consists of nine countries, where
more than half of the firms surveyed reported performance
in line with or better than expectations. The last
group contains two countries – Côte d’Ivoire and
Guinea – where performance was reported to be below
expectations by a significant portion of the investors.
Figure 3.25 Companies’ own assessment of their
performance over the past 3 years in relation
to their expectations
Well above expectations
5.6%
(65 cases)
Above expectations
10.9%
(125 cases)
In line with
expectations
45.4%
(523 cases)
Total valid cases: 1152
Below expectations
31.0%
Well below expectations
7.1%
(82 cases)
(357 cases)
Figure 3.26 Companies’ own assessment of their
performance over the past 3 years in relation
to their expectations by country
Guinea
Côte d'Ivoire
Ethiopia
Mali
Madagascar
Cameroon
Nigeria
Burkina Faso
Mozambique
Kenya
Senegal
Malawi
Tanzania, UR
Ghana
Uganda
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Well below expectations
+ below expectations
In line with
expectations
Well above expectations
+ above expectations
3 | An overview of foreign investment in the 15 countries
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