ENCOURAGING FDI IN THE NIGERIAN EDUCATIONAL SECTOR: AN ASSESSMENT OF OPPORTUNITIES AND BARRIERS

ENCOURAGING FDI IN THE NIGERIAN EDUCATIONAL SECTOR: AN ASSESSMENT OF OPPORTUNITIES AND BARRIERS

M.Sc. DISSERTATION

ABSTRACT

ENCOURAGING FDI IN THE NIGERIAN EDUCATIONAL SECTOR: AN ASSESSMENT OF OPPORTUNITIES AN BARRIERS

Keywords: FDI, Sub-Saharan Africa, Nigerian Educational Sector, Motivations, Barriers

Several authors have stated that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) helps development and diversification of a host country’s domestic industry. FDI is getting accelerated at a faster rate and different countries of the world are trying their best to attract more and more FDI as it proves to be a great force for triggering the domestic economic development and diversification.

The Educational sector is important for the continuous development of any nation. Empowerment through education is the bedrock of industrialization. Over the years, the Nigerian Government has continuously beckoned on investors to seek opportunities in the Nigerian Educational Sector. However, very few Multinationals firms have answered the clarion call and have attempted to explore the market opportunities in the Nigerian Educational Sector with some recording success while others failed.

In analyzing ways to encourage FDI, this research will assess the opportunities and barriers in the Nigerian Educational Sector and will focus on multinationals that have invested in the Nigerian Educational Sector.  The study will discover the motivations for FDI in the Nigerian Educational Sector, the FDI modes undertaken by Multinationals in the Nigerian Educational Sector, the motivation for the choice of FDI modes in the Nigerian Educational Sector, the barriers to FDI in the Nigerian Educational Sector in relation to motivation and the methods devised by multinationals to cope with these barriers from the view of personnel of three multinational companies that have invested in the Nigerian Educational Sector.

Using qualitative methods with an inductive approach, this work will show support for the literature on FDI motivations and will discover that market opportunities in the Nigerian Educational Sector are visible to multinationals because of the strong local networks they possess and their long term presence in Nigeria, the FDI entry mode most used by the multinationals when investing in the Nigerian Educational Sector is usually in the form of a non-equity joint venture. It will also show that the major barriers to FDI in the Nigerian Educational sector are Corruption, government bureaucracies, insecurity, bad reputation of Nigerians, political risk and lack of infrastructure and identify Cultism as a barrier specific to FDI in the Nigerian Educational Sector.