The US may be the economic superpower, and China the new manufacturing powerhouse, but there is one industry in which Africa still leads the world: the manufacture of red tape.

This year’s edition of “Doing Business”, an annual report published by the World Bank, is a depressing but important reminder of what we already knew: poor countries tend to stifle their economies with impossibly burdensome regulations, while most rich countries let entrepreneurs start businesses, buy and sell property, and ship goods through customs. In Brazil, it takes 152 days to satisfy the authorities that you are fit to establish and register a legal business. That process takes just two days in Australia; and yet somehow, despite this indecent haste, the fabric of Australian society has not yet fallen apart.