Survey results: Interestingly, the survey suggested that the business environment on the continent – both in its legal framework and in actuality – was quite supportive of business activity. Well over half ranked both the legal and political system and the day-today business environment as ‗fair‘ or ‗outstanding‘. At the same time, many others complained about general economic conditions, including perceived problems with infrastructure and overall governance. Figure 3: How is the business environment? 60% 48.7%49.1% 50% 40% 27.7% 25.7% 30% 20% 10% 6.2% 11.5%9.8% 8.9% 8.0% 4.5% 0% Hostile Unsupportive Indifferent Legal and political environment Fair Outstanding Actual business environment Source: Survey of key African governance stakeholders, November 2016 What – or What More – can the APRM do on Interference with the Private Sector? Despite the importance of a robust domestic private sector to the continent‘s future (and in many countries, it still has to be nurtured), private sector development has not received the political or public attention it deserves. The APRM may consider the following measures to contribute towards addressing this issue: 1. A repeated concern relates to the considerable information gap that impedes private business in Africa. The APRM inquiries have rendered a great service in bringing pertinent information to light, but they can do more. Understanding harassment of the private sector and bringing it out objectively and systematically can fill a serious information gap. However, this may require making more pointed and specific enquiries into the issue. At a minimum, it would be necessary to probe the experiences of businesspeople and the views of business/economic analysts. In practical terms, this would probably include making some changes to the questionnaire to ask about this phenomenon. While there is scope in the current formulation of the questionnaire 2. 3. 24 to address these issues (the Corporate Governance thematic area includes a query about the regulatory environment, for example), making inquiries into this issue may require inclusion of more direct questions to that effect. For example, if the Questionnaire were to include a question like ―in what ways does government action support or retard the operations of businesses?‖, the answer would provide a solid evidentiary basis on which the Panel can build its recommendations. Related to the above, while it is unlikely for the APRM to investigate each challenge facing the private sector in meaningful detail, it might be possible to do an in-depth assessment of one or two of the most severe challenges and to suggest a detailed course of action. This could, in part, be done in the initial background research that underpins the Country Review Missions, and be extensively canvassed while the missions are in-country. These analyses should be made publicly available, possibly through the proposed Knowledge Hub. An ongoing difficulty for business on the continent is lack of ‗voice’ to engage meaningfully in the formulation and development of public policy. Of course, this is