The transportation and warehousing and storage sectors form the backbone of the logistics industry, and it is the UK and Mexico that are attracting the most FDI in this field, although the US and China also score well on a country basis, while on a city level Dubai and Singapore have proved popular. 

Seemingly every FDI-hungry location in the world is eyeing the automotive and biotech sectors, but by focusing on the SME supply chain, the east German city of Leipzig is managing to excel in both areas.

Frontier developing countries are nothing new to express logistics company DHL Express, which has been operating in such markets for decades. Now, with growth in Europe and North America stunted, its CEO tells fDi that the company is reaping the benefits of its early endeavours in what are some of the fastest growing economies in the world.

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.