Les investissements directs étrangers comme facteur de croissance économique au Cameroun : Quelle est la réalité ?

The objective of this article is to question the reality of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as a factor of economic growth in Cameroon. The latter taken as an endogenous variable is measured by the annual growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); FDI, domestic investment and education are the variables of interest. To these we have associated other control variables that have an impact on economic growth. The study is carried out over the period 1970-2016 and uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method for estimating the parameters. The tests of Dickey-Fuller and Dickey-Fuller GLS made it possible to obtain the results on the stationarity of the variables and to carry out the cointegration test. Two regressions were applied: the first on the basic theoretical model and the second for the sensitivity analysis. The results obtained show that the assumption of presence of a cointegration relation is accepted. The error-correction term is negative and significant: this implies the existence of a short and long-term relationship between the variables. In addition, FDI is significantly positive for economic growth in Cameroon. It is therefore important for the managers of the latter to develop attractive measures to best capture these investments and direct them to sectors of activity creating added value.