South Sudan is not exactly renowned for its business-friendly climate. Neither are Afghanistan or, for that matter, Iraq. But Hugh Morris, a former British army officer, sees plenty of ventures diving in, for better and for worse.
managing director of TDI, a company that provides land-mine clearance and remote logistics support.
Of course, corporations are usually looking for new markets and resources, but these days some are also incentivized by an “open for business” development strategy — which can come with multilateral loans at preferential rates. In some cases, logistics are thornier than physical threat. Are the ports viable? Are the roads good? Is the price of electricity competitive? When analyzing growth markets, businesses say they look at a variety of factors, including whether they can actually secure and then import the supplies that they need, hire staff and, of course, keep those employees safe. When Gap became the first American retailer to enter government officials, trade union leaders and nongovernmental organizations, says Gap spokesperson
Indeed, between the help of its local partners and security consultants who monitor certain markets, Fatburger says it has learned whether to send in team members who are Lebanese, or Sunni or Shiite Muslims, depending on where the company is expanding within the Middle East. It now plans to open in Libya and Tunisia — countries that were at the center of the Arab Spring unrest.
last foreign businesses to close its doors when the fried chicken chain pulled out of Syria in 2013. And in
To help businesses navigate tricky territories like these,try to quantitative metrics, such as corruption indexes or the number of industrial enterprises that had been forcibly taken over by government groups. They tBut even these types of approaches aren’t an exact science. In fact, TDI’s Morris says that in addition to having a well-planned entry into a country, “we always have an exit plan that can be exercised very rapidly if required.”