Paper short abstract:

The research identifies winners and losers of globalisation in the real estate and construction sectors of Accra. In doing so, it examines the dynamics of local industrial upgrading and the importance of corrective national policies to mitigate the downsides of such process of globalisation.

Paper long abstract:

The discussion on the winners and losers of globalisation is a long-standing debate. The study contributes to it by presenting a case study of FDI and its impact on the development of the local construction and real estate sectors in the capital city of Ghana, Accra.

In the case study, the points of view of policy-makers are combined with those of managers and workers of both foreign and domestic companies in the construction sector. Even when dividing workers into low and high skilled workers it appears that both stand to gain from the process of globalisation the sector is undergoing. In this context, it is local contractors who can be identified as the losers, and specifically those local contractors who are too small or too poor to successfully enter joint ventures or technical collaboration projects with foreign firms.

The results stress the need for national policy-making institutions to address their own financial constraints and prioritise their role of oversight to ensure the enforcement of the existing legislation on foreign-domestic private partnership agreements.