Document: Handbook for Promoting Foreign Direct Investment in Medium-Size, Low-Budget Cities in Emerging Markets

The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) is one of a number of efforts to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted by world leaders during the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, and re-affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2005. Under the umbrella of the Millennium Project (http://www.unmillenniumproject.org), two efforts launched by The Earth Institute at Columbia University aim to help achieve the MDGs in rural and urban areas: the Millennium Villages Project (http://www.earth.columbia.edu/millenniumvillages/) assists a number of villages throughout sub-Saharan Africa to escape the poverty trap, while the Millennium Cities Initiative (http://www.earth.columbia.edu/mci/) assists a number of cities in the same region to become viable economic centers. The Millennium Cities Initiative was launched in 2006 with the strong support of the Governments of the participating countries.

This Handbook for Promoting Foreign Direct Investment in Medium-Size, Low-Budget Cities in Emerging Markets is intended as a tool for city administrators in cities of low-income countries to attract investment. Both domestic investment and foreign direct investment advance rural and urban economic growth and development. The distinctive role of foreign direct investment – on which this Handbook is focused – is that it brings scarce capital, know-how, technology, and access to foreign markets. Furthermore, if well embedded in the economic strategies of host economies, foreign direct investment can help improve the competitiveness of domestic enterprises as well, a core foundation of economic growth. Attracting foreign direct investment to Africa is difficult. It is even more difficult to attract it to locations outside a country’s capital. Yet, promising investment opportunities abound, in the cities themselves and especially if considered in conjunction with the agricultural sectors of their surroundings. Cities that seek foreign direct investment need, therefore, to make a determined and well-focused effort at investment promotion around viable and promising industries, tailored both to local conditions and world markets. This Handbook therefore offers an important tool to support cities in their efforts to attract foreign direct investment.