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International business research points to the institutional environment as a core determinant of the countries' ability to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the extant research has been more focused on understanding the specific institutional of the transition and emerging economies and has left largely untapped African countries. In this paper we examine the impact of a selected number of six institutional dimensions on sub-Saharan countries' ability to attract FDI inflows. Results show that the quality of the institutional environment is positively related to the FDI into these countries, confirming prior work on different geographies but showing some remarkable differences. We extend extant research on the institutional environments and distances into contexts of extreme underinstitutionalization that characterize much of the sub-Saharan African region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]