This report summarizes indicators of the ease of doing business compiled by the Doing Business project of the World Bank with a special focus on Africa. To evaluate the performance of Africa in a broader perspective, the indicators for the region are compared with those of two other developing regions - Latin America and East Asia. A comparison of the indicators across the regions reveals the difficulties involved in doing business in Africa. These include stringent bureaucratic hurdles for setting up and running a business, limited access to credit, an inefficient business tax system, minimal protection to private sector participants, limited legal enforcement of business contracts, and a generally less conducive environment for undertaking international trade. The region's performance is very low especially when compared with East Asia and the Pacific region. From this analysis it was found that levels of economic development and types of legal systems are among the factors that are strongly correlated with inter-country differences in the ease of doing business.