Neutral-Shoring: Towards a Regional Approach to Geoeconomic Fragmentation in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper formalizes the concept of neutral-shoring as a resilience-building strategy against geoeconomic fragmentation in sub-Saharan Africa. It contributes to the growing body of research on geoeconomic fragmentation by conceptualizing neutral-shoring as an actor-centred approach to fragmentation, focusing on regional institutions' efforts to attract investment into Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The paper followed an inductive-deductive approach to review FDI inflow dynamics and strategic coupling in Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia. Finally, the paper argued that a more open and geopolitically neutral SSA tends to be better positioned to benefit from the FDI fragmentation and to seize the opportunities to reposition its regional assets into vital hubs for Global Production Networks (GPNs) through strategic coupling.