Chapter 5
Determinants of Foreign Investment
and International Aid for Meeting
the Sustainable Development Goals
in Africa: A Visual Cognitive Review
of the Literature
Julia Lopes, Albert Novas Somanje, Esteban Velez, Rodolfo Dam Lam,
and Osamu Saito
5.1 Introduction
Despite the significant progress made in the past decades, the attainment of equitable
and sustainable development remains one of the most difficult global challenges,
especially in developing countries. Poverty, for example, has been consistently
decreasing since the early 1980s, when almost half of the global population lived
below the international poverty line of USD 1.25 per day (Chen and Ravallion 2009;
United Nations 2015). However, progress towards poverty alleviation has been
variable across regions. While extreme poverty rates in Asia decreased rapidly
(mainly in China), in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the absolute number of people
J. Lopes (*)
United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan
University of Brasília, Brasilia, Brazil
Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede CLIMA), Brasilia, Brazil
A. N. Somanje · E. Velez
United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: somanje@student.unu.edu
R. D. Lam
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
O. Saito
Institute for Global Environmental Studies (IGES), Hayama, Japan
Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI), The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: o-saito@iges.or.jp
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
A. Gasparatos et al. (eds.), Sustainability Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa I,
Science for Sustainable Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4458-3_5
161
Determinants of Foreign Investment
and International Aid for Meeting
the Sustainable Development Goals
in Africa: A Visual Cognitive Review
of the Literature
Julia Lopes, Albert Novas Somanje, Esteban Velez, Rodolfo Dam Lam,
and Osamu Saito
5.1 Introduction
Despite the significant progress made in the past decades, the attainment of equitable
and sustainable development remains one of the most difficult global challenges,
especially in developing countries. Poverty, for example, has been consistently
decreasing since the early 1980s, when almost half of the global population lived
below the international poverty line of USD 1.25 per day (Chen and Ravallion 2009;
United Nations 2015). However, progress towards poverty alleviation has been
variable across regions. While extreme poverty rates in Asia decreased rapidly
(mainly in China), in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the absolute number of people
J. Lopes (*)
United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan
University of Brasília, Brasilia, Brazil
Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede CLIMA), Brasilia, Brazil
A. N. Somanje · E. Velez
United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: somanje@student.unu.edu
R. D. Lam
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
O. Saito
Institute for Global Environmental Studies (IGES), Hayama, Japan
Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI), The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: o-saito@iges.or.jp
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
A. Gasparatos et al. (eds.), Sustainability Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa I,
Science for Sustainable Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4458-3_5
161