From institutional distance to development outcomes: responsible agricultural investment and legitimacy in Africa

Overseas agricultural investment plays a crucial role in ensuring food security and accelerating the construction of agricultural powerhouses. Agricultural multinational enterprises (AMNEs) from emerging markets face significant challenges due to institutional distance in host countries, especially in African countries. A key concern in both theory and practice is how to address legitimacy pressures and achieve synergy between commercial and social value through responsible investment. Drawing on institutional theory and corporate social responsibility theory, this paper develops an analytical framework of “institutional distance–embedded responsibility–legitimacy acquisition.” Using the China National Agricultural Development Group (CADG) as the case study—specifically its sisal planting and processing project in Tanzania and its Agricultural Technology Demonstration Center project in Benin—the study examines the mechanisms and effects of responsible investment. The results show that the institutional distance faced by agricultural multinational enterprises is multidimensional and contextually embedded, particularly regarding land tenure systems and smallholder cognitive frames. Through a three-tier progressive strategy of “production embeddedness–community embeddedness–development embeddedness,” enterprises respond to regulatory, normative, and cognitive institutional pressures respectively, thereby obtaining legitimacy for their operations in the host country. Beyond legitimacy acquisition, the responsible investment model generates measurable development outcomes, including enhanced food availability, improved household income and food access, livelihood diversification through intercropping, and progressive gender inclusion. However, the translation of production gains into improved nutrition and dietary diversity is not automatic, and distributional challenges—including potential elite capture—warrant critical attention. The sustainability of responsible investment is constrained by the degree of coupling between corporate resource capabilities and the host country’s institutional environment, with land governance and financial viability posing persistent challenges. This study deepens the understanding of responsible investment in the internationalization of agricultural enterprises and provides theoretical insights and practical implications for agricultural foreign investment from emerging market countries.