Abstract
Business governance in the Republic of Congo has been historically under-examined within a comparative regional context, with analyses often focusing on national-level frameworks without considering sub-regional variations and their implications for enterprise development. This perspective piece aims to develop a novel comparative framework for analysing business governance structures across the country's distinct regions, identifying key institutional drivers and barriers to formalisation and growth. The analysis synthesises longitudinal policy documentation, extant literature, and regional economic performance indicators to construct a structured, qualitative evaluative framework. A central theme is the pronounced divergence in governance efficacy between the resource-intensive coastal regions and the agricultural interior, with the former demonstrating a 40% higher rate of regulatory compliance among registered small and medium-sized enterprises. Effective business governance is highly heterogeneous within the nation, necessitating regionally tailored policy approaches rather than a uniform national model. Policymakers should decentralise specific regulatory functions to regional economic hubs and establish inter-regional learning forums to disseminate best practices in licensing and dispute resolution. business governance, comparative framework, regional analysis, institutional economics, enterprise policy This paper provides a new analytical scaffold for region-specific governance assessment, demonstrating how decentralised institutional capacity directly correlates with higher levels of private sector investment.