Local Entrepreneurs versus FDI: a Battle We Are Losing

Local Entrepreneurs versus FDI: a Battle We Are Losing

8 December 2025

We praise entrepreneurship.

But often it is nothing more than lip service. The reality is very different.

SME policy is not just a paper tiger; it is a façade behind which a kind of hell is hidden.

Anyone who starts a business enters more than a Kafkaesque nightmare. Take the recent case of Eric. Twenty years ago, out of necessity, he began his ATV tour company. The government “informally” assigned him a piece of land. Now, twenty years later, he was suddenly accused of land theft and forcibly removed.

Why? Because foreign investors had purchased the land behind him to build luxury homes that local people could never afford. All the paperwork for them was neatly arranged. Suddenly, it became painfully clear that foreigners enjoy more rights than locals. And to save face, ministers are now sitting down with the local entrepreneur to find him a new piece of land.

The obsession with Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has produced countless disasters. Too many to list. Just look at the news:– The Zakito towers are unaffordable for the local population.– Illegal land grabbing and the privatization of beaches in Pietermaai; there are almost no public beaches left.– Vigor, which—like nearly all potential refinery partners except the first—turns out to be little more than a joke, to put it politely.– Ennia, whose owner was also an “investor”. It now appears that part of the money drained from the company was used to build the Trump Peace Institute's roof.

You cannot convince people that FDI does not come to give, but to take.

Meanwhile, local entrepreneurs are granted nothing. Through permits, regulations, forms, and taxes, their lives are made miserable. It costs them their social lives and their health. No one feels sorry for them.

I speak from experience: since October, I have been waiting for payment from an institution that is supposed to promote socioeconomic development. My emails are not even answered. These are the “respectable” people who claim they will create broad prosperity. They lack the self-reflective capacity to see that they are not part of the solution, but part of the problem. Actions speak louder than words.

And yet the lie persists that we “want more local entrepreneurs.”

If we genuinely want local entrepreneurs, we must first stop treating them as the problem.

Miguel goede