Top 10 African countries with the best environment for trade

A business-enabling economy plays a pivotal role in fostering economic growth, innovation, and prosperity within a nation. It refers to the conducive environment, policies, and infrastructure that support the establishment, growth, and sustainability of businesses.

Some countries tend to create more favorable business ecosystems than others, and often times this single factor is the difference between an economically prosperous region and a struggling one. 

While there are other economic components to becoming a thriving nation such as industrialization, exportation, and development of natural and human resources, a fail-safe economy is typically bolstered by its local and foreign direct investment. 

To this effect, businesses all across the globe are in constant search of business-enabling economies, particularly in a region such as Africa which is considered the fastest-growing economy of any continent on the globe. 

Africa’s largest bank, Standard Bank, recently released its Africa Trade Barometer report, where African countries are ranked based on their business ecosystem. This report is one of the most comprehensive research reports on the state of trade on the African continent as experienced on the ground by real African businesses. It offers a comparative view of the enablers and challenges to facilitating trade across 10 key African markets. 

For the second edition of the report, qualitative and quantitative information was acquired from 2,554 organizations between the months of August and September 2022, representing small, large, and corporate businesses in all 10 economies. Third-party sources, such as the World Bank, the International Trade Center, and the central banks of the first 10 focal markets, further enlarge the intelligence. 

The Africa Trade Barometer (ATB) is an aggregate of the Quantitative Trade Barometer (QTB) and the Survey Trade Barometer (STB). 

The averages of all the chosen indicators, which are exclusively obtained from already-existing secondary data sources/reported facts, are used to determine the Standard Bank 3-Year Quantitative Trade Barometer (QTB) ratings and rankings per nation, while the scores and rankings provided by the Standard Bank Firm Survey Trade Barometer (STB) are the averages of all the information gathered only from the primary research surveys performed with 2,554 enterprises.

Below are the top 10 African countries with the best environment for trade: