The impact of the corporate sector of the Sahel-Saharan States on ensuring economic sovereignty: opportunities and limitations

Abstract

The relevance of the article is due to the fact that in modern conditions, the Sahel-Saharan states are characterized by an insufficient level of economic sovereignty, despite years of reforms. The article shows that the efforts being made are not successful not only because of conflicts, the expansion of transnational corporations, inefficient public administration, low level of development of human capital and institutions, but also, first of all, because of the lack of formed entrepreneurship. The purpose of the article is to study the impact of the corporate sector of the Sahel-Saharan states on ensuring economic sovereignty, highlighting the most promising opportunities and critical limitations based on the results of the analysis. The subject of the study is the trends and patterns of development of the corporate sector of the countries of the region and its impact on the formation of opportunities to ensure economic sovereignty and the elimination of existing restrictions. The methodology of the article includes methods of a systematic approach using a comparative method to clarify the features of economic sovereignty; the task of substantiating the importance of the corporate sector in these processes was implemented using the method of qualitative content analysis, which was chosen to explore the possibilities and limitations of influencing economic sovereignty. The main conclusions of this study are: to identify the problems and limitations of ensuring the economic sovereignty of the Sahel-Saharan States (high dependence on multinational companies, poor infrastructure and institutions, lack of financial resources and human competencies); to substantiate the impact of the insufficient level of development of the corporate sector in African countries. The novelty of the study lies in the formulation of measures and directions for establishing international economic cooperation between companies of the Sahel-Saharan states and Russia as an important organizational task for the development of the corporate sector and, consequently, for ensuring economic sovereignty. Among them: ensuring legal stability as a political priority, forming the foundations for a high-quality legal investment framework, encouraging business ties, honesty and responsible business conduct as a key element of protecting foreign investors, access to finance and information support for the development of human capital through professional development.