President Museveni refers. Thus, the Burkina Faso CRR notes that fraud and corruption are hindering business,59 and discusses the harassment of transport vehicles to demand payments.60 The Kenya CRR notes that businesses complain of harassment by officials for payment.61 The Nigeria CRR refers to ―the scourge of corruption‖ that poses ―the greatest and most troubling challenge to realising Nigeria‘s huge developmental potential.‖62 Indeed, the challenge of corruption is identified and discussed in detail in virtually all APRM CRRs,63 Rwanda being a rare exception that was praised by the APRM report for the ―relative absence of corruption‖.64 poorly, most of them being placed in the bottom half of the global rankings. This provides some evidence of the difficulties that institutional dysfunction causes for business, although there are a few exceptions, notably Rwanda. Perhaps more indicative are the top concerns mentioned by the respondents. Corruption features prominently, suggesting that extortion and bribing are causing significant distortions to business. Overall, much remains to be done to improve the business environment in Africa. This means laws and systems that seek to achieve clearly defined goals, implemented in a manner that imposes the least possible collateral cost on business, and opens the fewest opportunities for undue interference. In many cases, a history of ideological hostility on the part of the state towards the private sector has left a residual mark. This point is made in the Algeria CRR.65 This is best represented in Mauritius, with its long history of probusiness government policy.66 As its CRR puts it, ‗The business environment in Mauritius is characterised by openness and a pro-business, outward-looking policy.‘67 This is exceptional. In other cases, the private sector is small and not well organised, and struggles to find a coherent voice on matters of policy and governance. An informative view of this issue may be gleaned from the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR). Based on survey of businesspeople (and therefore representing the views of that constituency), it provides a worthwhile perspective on the experience of business operating in the countries it reviews. It uses a scale of 1 to 7 (7 being the best and 1 the worst) to evaluate a range of factors. Groups of these are then combined to produce scores for a series of twelve ‗pillars‘, these being important determinants of countries‘ competitiveness. These are then combined with one another to produce an overall score describing countries‘ overall competitiveness. The information presented in the latest GCR (20162017), helps underline the difficulties facing the private sector in Africa in its relationship with governments. Institutions – which deal with the state of bureaucracies, judiciaries, security services and so on – typically score 59 60 61 62 63 64 Burkina Faso CRR, p. 237. Burkina Faso CRR, p. 258. Kenya CRR, p. 174. Nigeria CRR, pp. 330-331. The expression “the scourge of corruption”, in addition to the Nigeria CRR, has also been used in, among others, Mozambique (CRR p. 223); Lesotho (CRR p. 81); Ethiopia (CRR p. 166); Benin (CRR p. 153); Burkina Faso (CRR p. 168); and Algeria (CRR p. 416); Mali (CRR p. 22, where corruption is also described as “an endemic phenomenon” that has “reached disturbing proportions”). The South Africa (CRR p. 7) refers to it as “the vice of corruption”; Sierra Leone (CRR 23) is described as a country with “a long and painful history of corruption”; Zambia suffers from “the high prevalence of corruption”, leading Zambian President Michael Chilufya Sata to note that “the public had lost confidence in the AntiCorruption Commission (ACC) in the fight against corruption” (Zambia CRR pp. 33 and 358); in Mauritius (CRR p. 17), “corruption is a serious problem in the country”; etc. Rwanda CRR (p. 225). 65 66 67 23 Algeria CRR, p. 200. Mauritius CRR, pp. 69, 117, 229, 233, 245. Mauritius CRR, p. 243.