Third world multinationals and South Africa’s decentralization programme

Geographers have accorded considerable attention to the spatial behaviour of developed-country multinationals in host countries. In this analysis the aim is to investigate the location behaviour of a particular category of multinational enterprise which has emerged significantly only in the past decade viz., the developing country or Third World multinational. More specifically, the emergence of the Third World multinational is detailed and their growth and locational behaviour in South Africa is investigated. It is shown that the patterns of manufacturing investment from developing country multinationals are almost exclusively oriented towards peripheral regions of South Africa in contrast to the core region orientation of developed country multinationals.