Place Based Economic Development with Simon White

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Business Environment Reform

Simon White | Specialist in policies and programs for more enabling business environments.

Lebanon's business environment

A perspective on Lebanon’s business environment that draws largely from the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators: “The red lines in the Lebanese flag extend to its business environment“. In a linked article, the broader concerns of political instability are raised. It brings up the common question regarding the

New guidelines on industrial policy and business environment reform

The Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) has just published guidelines for donor and development agencies on how to complement business environment reforms with industrial policy. I was the principal author of this document, which was based on a background paper and on broad consultation with members of the DCED

Re-regulating business licensing in South Africa

In March and April this year, the South African Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and its minister, Rob Davies, found themselves in a storm of protest over the attempt to introduce a new law on business licensing – Government Notice 231 of 2013. Critics of the draft bill complained it

Doing business in the "worst" state of Nigeria

Last month I had the opportunity to visit Ogun State in Nigeria and to look at how the Ogun State Government approaches the business sector. It’s a pretty bleak picture, but there are signs of change and there are many state commissioners and senior civil servants who are promoting

The enabling city: places of social innovation

“Social innovation thrives on the ideas and efforts of social entrepreneurs and creative individuals whose socially conscious work contributes to environmentalism in a variety of ways”, writes Chiara Camponeschi in her 2010 e-book, The Enabling City; Place-Based Creative Problem-Solving and the Power of the Everyday. Here, the

The Kafka Brigade and the "strangling and depersonalising effect of bureaucracy"

Franz Kafka wrote about the strangling and depersonalising effect of bureaucracy. The Kafka Brigade reminds us that people using services have a lot to say about improving them – if only we would listen. Kafka Brigade is an independent, non-profit action research team, comprising a network of action researchers from

51 Lessons for Donor and Development Agency Support to Business Environment Reforms

Last month, the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) published a paper I prepared on the practice of supporting business environment reform (BER). This is a synthesis of the findings of three practice reviews that I led in Bangladesh (2011), Kenya (2010) and Rwanda (2011). The reports of these country