Green Investment and Business Performance: Evidence from Africa

Addressing a paucity of research about industrial adoption of environmentally-benign technologies in Africa and, more generally, in tropical developing countries, we examined the Nigerian pulp and paper industry as a case study. Qualitative interviews with upper echelon executives of Nigerian firms challenge conventional expectations that energy intensive industries in developing markets operate amid highly pollution-intensive conditions, within weak or non-existent formal environmental regulatory frameworks, and with limited institutional capacity. Our findings suggest a strong positive relationship between cleaner technology use and business performance of African industrial firms. Our study also suggests the adoption of classical ‘win-win’ integrated preventive environmental strategy, eco-efficiency and green productivity which improves industrial efficiency and profitability. The firms are shown to have moved beyond end-of-pipe technologies and cleaner technologies and adopted industrial ecology and “zero emission” principles with appropriate reuse of the remaining waste streams turning the production system into a sustainable industrial ecosystem.