This year’s edition of an annual report from the World Bank measuring how easy or hard it is to start and run a business around the world has good news for sub-Saharan Africa. In its 2012 Doing Business survey, the bank found that in 36 of 46 countries – 78 percent of the economies in the region – regulatory reforms were untangling more of the red tape and instituting more legal protection for investors and property owners.
The ability to start a business, however small, is an important step up the development process, allowing citizens to create wealth, provide jobs and move from the basic, often small-farming or local marketing ranks of the economy, to higher levels of production.
Where regulation is burdensome or lax, the bank noted, “Success depends more on whom you know than on what you can do.”
African entrepreneurs still face more obstacles than their counterparts in rich counties, the report said (http://www.doingbusiness.org), citing inadequate infrastructure, unqualified job applicants and persistent regulatory snags. Of 183 countries surveyed globally, only four African nations – Mauritius, South Africa, Rwanda and Tunisia – rank in the top 50 countries. For Rwanda, this is a remarkable feat. Less than two decades ago, a wrenching and destructive campaign of genocide and a civil war left the country in near ruins.
Topping the list of most business friendly nations or territories are Singapore, in first place, followed by Hong Kong, New Zealand, the United States, Denmark, Norway, Britain, South Korea (in the top 10 for the first time), Ireland and Iceland. Morocco and Macedonia, along with South Korea, were among countries cited as having made the most progress among nations in the past year.
The hallmarks of high rankings among countries where doing business is easiest include access to reliable information on all kinds of regulations, from fee schedules to insolvency procedures – an important factor in times of economic and financial crises.
Barbara Crossette is the senior consulting editor and writer for PassBlue and the United Nations correspondent for The Nation. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has also contributed to the Oxford Handbook on the United Nations.
Previously, Crossette was the UN bureau chief for The New York Times from 1994 to 2001 and previously its chief correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia. She is the author of “So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas,” “The Great Hill Stations of Asia” and a Foreign Policy Association study, “India Changes Course,” in the Foreign Policy Association’s “Great Decisions 2015.”
Crossette won the George Polk award for her coverage in India of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and the 2010 Shorenstein Prize for her writing on Asia.
