Continental Focus, International Reach

Mauritius, Rwanda, and Morocco Top “Doing Business” List for Africa

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

The World Bank Group’s Doing Business project released its most recent report. The project provides an objective measure of business regulation for local firms in 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational level; this included the 54 countries in Africa.

The first Doing Business report was published in 2003. It covered five indicator sets and 133 economies. Since the first report was published it has grown to cover 11 indicator sets and 190 economies. This year’s report covers 11 indicator sets and 190 economies. Most indicator sets refer to a case scenario in the largest business city of each economy, except for 11 economies that had a population of more than 100 million as of 2013 (Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Russian Federation and the US) where Doing Business also collected data for the second largest business city.

There was some positive news in the report for the continent, such as sub-Saharan Africa carrying out 83 reforms, a record number for the second consecutive year. In addition,Djibouti, Malawi, Nigeria, and Zambia hadthe distinction of having the most improved economies in 2016/17 and were some of the countries who instituted regulatory reforms.

Unfortunately for the continent only nine countries made it into the top 100 rankings, with Mauritius coming in at 25 overall. Mauritius was followed by Rwanda and Morocco who came made it to the 41th and 69th spots, respectively.

Countries with work to do in making their economies more business friendly are Central African Republic, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, and South Sudan. All five of these countries round out the bottom of the list with only Yemen and Venezuela breaking up the streak from Africa.

Africa’s Big 5 oil producing countries, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Libya, and Nigeria, who one would think would have a semi-friendly business environment did not rank high on the list. Algeria came in at 166, with its lowest indicator set scores being for taxes and trade across borders. Angola came in at 175, hindering its Doing Business ranking was its rankings for getting credit and enforcing contracts. Egypt, the Big 5 country with the best ranking at 128, has an issue with protecting minority investors. Given Libya’s current security situation it is a given that its ranking would not be high, it came in at 185 out of 190. Last but not least is Nigeria, Africa’s current number one oil producer, which was ranked 145 in the Doing Business report but, as stated previously, Nigeria was one of the countries with the distinction of having one of the most improved economies.

 


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