Business
Ease of doing business in Sub-Saharan Africa improves
The latest Ease of Doing Business Index found the vast majority of sub-Saharan countries have improved their business environments in the past year, and six made the top 15 most improved.
Sub-Saharan Africa isn’t such a bad place to open up shop these days, thanks to legal and regulatory reforms that have made life easier for businesses in many parts of the continent.
The recent improvements have been totted up in the latest Ease of Doing Business Index, a set of rankings published each year by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation. Taking into account factors like how many days it takes to set up a new company and how much it costs to get a shipping container through a port, the index serves as a global guide to business friendliness.
Thirty-six of the region’s 46 economies have improved their business environments in the past year, the report found.
Rwanda is the continent’s standout performer, having improved its business environment more than any country in the world, bar one – Georgia – since 2005. Among Rwanda’s recent changes: slashing the fees associated with starting a business, making credit information more readily available, and reducing the frequency of a company’s value-added tax filings from monthly to quarterly. Rwanda now ranks 45th overall in the index, just one slot behind Spain.
