Doing Business in Africa: Some Challenges

In 2000, The Economist depicted Africa as “the hopeless continent” where “wars still rage from north to south and east to west” and countries are deluged by government-sponsored thuggery, fl oods, famine, poverty, diseases and pestilence ( The Economist , 2000). Such depictions have fuelled pessimism about the attractiveness and effi ciency of the Africa’s business environment among businesses and policy makers. Other regions like Asia and Latin America have on the other hand received endorsements as favourable places for doing business during the same period. A number of scholars have tabled additional reasons in support of this Afropessimism. Asiedu (2003) and Ajayi (2006), for instance, suggest that issues with governance failures, macroeconomic instability or policy failures, problems of policy credibility, poor liberalization policies, political instability, corruption, poor infrastructure, infl ation and investment restrictions are some of the reasons accounting for the negative image of the continent. Others mention diseases, natural disasters, military coup d’états and wars as part of Africa’s problem (Cleeve, 2009). Rogoff and Reinhart (2003) showed that during the 19602001 period, 40 per cent of the countries in Africa have had at least one war, and 28 per cent had two or more wars. Musila and Sigué (2006) noted that this rate is three times more than that in the western hemisphere (excluding Canada and US), and twice that of Asia. These evidences and depictions have been fuelling Afro-pessimism within the international business community.