Nearly everywhere some effort is being made to stimulate local private investment. Economic reforms, generally in the form of structural adjustment programmes approved by the IMF and the World Bank, have improved the business milieu, as a result of which new businesses have been started, particularly in agriculture and services. Yet sub-Saharan Africa remains a region characterized by 'the low level and poor revival of private investment'. Until recently, and as considered earlier in this chapter, few governments have created a conducive environment for business development to attain the desired levels of private investment. Such an environment requires a sound and supportive state bureaucracy which is not much in evidence.
Corrupt officials pervade government offices at all levels and raise the costs of doing business.
Incompetent bureaucrats, including many suspicious of private entrepreneurs, inhibit new private investment. Property rights continue to be inadequately guaranteed and an impartial and predictable legal system is still found wanting. Private enterprise also complains loudly about the inadequacies of local infrastructural facilities for its business needs. Moreover, private manufacturing firms express serious anxiety about the authorities doing little or nothing to control rampant smuggling which is destroying the domestic markets for their products. They also 'scream murder' about being confronted by too much competition, arising mainly from reductions in trade restrictions and protection and which is undermining their businesses.