A recent survey conducted by the East African Business Council (EABC) assesses the business environment within the East Africa Community (EAC), ranking the ease of doing business in each Partner State, according to the perceptions of the companies interviewed. Based on the answers of respondents, Rwanda is indicated as the country in the EAC region with a particularly favorable (‘easy’) business environment (Rank 2.08), followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the easiness of doing business is perceived as moderate (Rank 2.75): this is undoubtedly also a sign of improvement in the sense of security in the country. Similar conclusions apply to Uganda (Rank 3.05), Burundi (Rank 3.18), and Tanzania (Rank 3.32), all considered countries where the ease of doing business is “moderate”. Disappointing instead is the ranking of Kenya (3.43) - a country historically considered as ‘business friendly’ –  that despite sharing with Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania the status of moderately easy country for doing business, appears only second in the ranking, after South Sudan, which is the country in the region where it is harder to conduct business (even though the report admits that the responses from DRC and South Sudan were too low to make a conclusive assessment on ease of doing business in these countries).

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An interesting article published on the International Growth Centre (IGC) blog analyses the role of services in Africa in the economic transformation of the continent, raising the question of whether this sector can drive the growth of the African economies and at a rate comparable to manufacturing. Indeed, despite the remarkable economic growth of many of its economies in the latest years, Africa has not yet been able to replicate so far the rapid and sustained gains in incomes experienced by Asiatic countries during their race to industrialization.

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