The open economic policies adopted in Nigeria in the early 2000,s is seen is regarded as that created an opportunity for the Nigerian firms to emerge as large domestic firms to embarked and become a regional players. Also, firm’s technology, communication service have also emerged to support the growing economy and firms. This this also strengthened the firms’ abilities to expand their operations beyond Nigeria especially in Africa in the financial, service, telecommunication and entertainment, retail sector(AFDB, 2013; Barbara, Eric, & Collen, 2015). Drawing of internationalisation theory and OLI theory the purpose of this study is to examine the internalisation process of emerging SSA firms from Nigeria, being the largest economy in Africa.This study focus is on the motivation and path of Nigerian firm’s internationalisation of the businesses beyond the national borders. A case study design is adopted to the study empirically four Nigerian firms from different sector of the economy. The next section discuss the theoretical positioning of this study followed by review of relevant literature pertaining motivation and location path of EM, then followed by the research methodology, analysis, findings and …show more content…
Particularly, Sub-Saharan Africa MNCs have received little attention in the global business arena, despite the increased internationalisation of SSA which the sub-continent has seen in the last decade both in their cross border and regional expansion. In 2012 African multinationals outperformed other emerging market multinationals (Bailey-Smith, 2013). ECOWAS countries are now the major destination for Nigeria foreign direct investments while some Nigerian firms now have subsidiaries in various Africa countries and beyond. The Nigerian banks though were the pioneers in Nigerian firms’ foreign regional investments. For example by 2012 United Bank for Africa (UBA) and Access Bank combined were operating in more than 30 countries (Alade,2014;Lukonga & Chung 2010). Besides, firms from different sector of Nigerian economy have also emerged and have taken the leap to invest region and beyond namely Dangote and Interswitch.
However, the strategic approach to internationalisation by EMNCs has become an important issue in the international Business (IB) arena. This is true in terms of motivation, location path. The study of the internationalisation process of Nigerian firms is at an early stage of development; therefore, further studies are required, to provide and in-depth insight