Recognition of Opportunity for Internationalization in the Sub- Sahara Africa: An Attention-Based Perspective

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is home to six of the top ten fastest-growing economies in the world. Despite this strong performance, Canadian firms have a limited presence in SSA. International business studies suggest that global expansion of firms into foreign markets is possible when firms have solid access to international networks, familiar market institutions, and senior managers with international experience. By analyzing several cases, grounded in an attention- based perspective, this study aims to answer 1) how senior managers’ attention processes enable opportunity recognition in SSA and 2) how they translate the recognized business opportunity into global expansion in SSA. This thesis uses qualitative research in which interviews were conducted with staff from seven companies that internationalized into SSA. The key findings show that senior managers’ initial motivations to expand into and their categorization of the SSA market impacted opportunity recognition for global expansion.