Review of Corporate Social Responsibility in East Africa: Current State and Future Research Directions

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-705-7_19How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Autism Spectrum Disorder; Augmented Reality; Gamification; Environmental; Social; Governance; Developing economies

Abstract

Although Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) research has gained global scholarly attention, its application in developing countries, particularly East Africa, remains limited. This study examined the state of CSR research and practices in East Africa through a systematic literature review using the PRISMA framework, covering the period from 2009 to 2025. A total of 82 high-quality, peer-reviewed journal articles from the Scopus database were analysed. The findings indicate a gradual increase in CSR publications, from 2 to 9 articles per year. CSR research in East African region is heavily dominated by social dimensions (79.3%), with comparatively limited focus to environmental (12.2%) and ethical (8.5%) aspects, indicating a community- and philanthropy-oriented approach to CSR Qualitative methods were most commonly used, followed by quantitative and mixed methods. Research outputs were fragmented across journals, with no dominant outlet. Theoretical foundations were largely drawn from stakeholder, legitimacy, institutional, and shareholder theories. This study focused on Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. The study concludes by recommending broader research and methodological approaches and the inclusion of additional databases to strengthen CSR knowledge in the region.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lilian Julius Kishimbo
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/13
TI  - Review of Corporate Social Responsibility in East Africa: Current State and Future Research Directions
BT  - Proceedings of the FIREtalk Conference - Research on FIRE! (research-on-fire 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 274
EP  - 289
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-705-7_19
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-705-7_19
ID  - Kishimbo2026
ER  -