Uganda

A Good Ally in the East Africa Region

In 2014, Uganda came in at 132nd out of 189 economies in the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking, down from 126 in 2013, reflecting that in the Bank’s view it had failed to improve the “ease of Doing Business in the country.” Nonetheless, Uganda was the second best performing economy of the East African Community (EAC) in the 2013 Doing Business report, and the country is a good ally for the World Bank in the region. It was recently chosen as one of the pilot countries to test the Bank’s new Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture (BBA) indicator, a project that aims to “help policy makers strengthen agribusiness globally, enabling the farm sector to participate more fully in the market.” With this project underway, the Bank will assist Uganda in creating an environment that supports the establishment of more private agribusinesses in the country, despite concerns that agricultural investments in Uganda have provoked land grabbing and dispossession of local populations.