By Princewill Ubani · Published
Research ID: PA-ART-malaysia-biggest-asian-investor-africa
In 2013, Malaysia Was Asia's Biggest Investor in Africa, Not China
China’s growing footprint in Africa has dominated headlines for two decades, with new railways, ports and stadiums regularly credited to Chinese state investment. Yet according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s World Investment Report 2013, the Asian country with the largest cumulative foreign direct investment stock in Africa in 2011 was not China at all. It was Malaysia.
UNCTAD’s figures put Malaysia’s FDI stock in Africa at $19.3 billion that year, ahead of China’s $16 billion and India’s $14 billion. For Malaysia, that African investment represented roughly a fifth of its entire global FDI portfolio, which had grown to about $106 billion by the end of 2011, a striking concentration for a country whose profile in Africa attracted far less international attention than China’s.
Two Malaysian companies did most of the work behind that figure. Petronas, the state oil company, built up exploration and production interests across the continent, including projects in Algeria and activity in Egypt, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Sime Darby, a conglomerate with deep roots in palm oil, expanded plantation operations into West Africa, including a palm oil mill project in Grand Cape Mount, Liberia. Both companies had been present in various African markets since the 1990s and 2000s, building positions gradually and with comparatively little of the political fanfare that accompanied Chinese infrastructure deals over the same period.
The finding briefly reordered assumptions about which Asian power actually held the largest economic stake on the continent, even as China’s trade volume with Africa, driven by imports of oil and minerals and exports of manufactured goods, continued to dwarf Malaysia’s in absolute terms. Investment stock and trade flow measure different things, and UNCTAD’s 2011 snapshot captured accumulated ownership rather than the year-to-year commercial activity that made China’s presence so visible. By the ranking that mattered for that report, though, Malaysia, not China, held the largest Asian investment position in Africa.
Sources
- “World Investment Report 2013: Global Value Chains”, UNCTAD.
- “Malaysia – Africa's Silent Partner”, The Diplomat.