Speaking to fDi at the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Tokyo, finance ministers from Côte d’Ivoire, Lesotho, Rwanda and Uganda discuss the very different challenges their countries face when it comes to attracting investment from both stagnant developed markets and newly active emerging markets, particularly those within Africa. 

The property crash that hit Dubai in 2008 put an end to years of rapid growth. While these wounds are not yet fully healed, the emirate is returning to strength and is retaining its allure to investors as the safest of havens with the finest infrastructure in the Middle East.

Dubai’s free zones are drawing in businesses unfamiliar with the Middle East, thanks to a combination of an impressive infrastructure, sound business advice being on offer and low taxation. 

Iraq's banking sector is struggling to put its ever-increasing assets to work, a situation not helped by the fact that it is dominated by inefficient state-owned institutions. Can an influx of foreign banks – and the technology and expertise they bring – help transform the sector, or will development hinge on the state-owned banks' ability to reform?  

The Arab Spring protests, and the months of political instability that followed, slowed FDI inflows into north Africa. But rather than pulling out of the region entirely, many investors simply put their projects on hold or moved into other more stable economies such as Morocco and Algeria.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the telecoms and mobile phone industry has become the fastest growing sector in the country after oil and gas. And the competition between the three major service providers is set to push the industry further.

The turmoil that has beset the Middle East and north African political scene over the past two years has brought about a change in its investment mindset too, with many countries in the region looking to diversify their industrial output.