The ASI blog has a link to the World Bank's Doing Business in 2005 report, which shows many of the regulatory and bureaucratic obstacles to prosperity:

For example, registering property requires one step in Norway, but 16 in Algeria. Incorporating a business takes two days in Canada, but 153 in Mozambique. Sacking a worker in Guatemala costs a firm three years’ worth of wages, compared with almost nothing in New Zealand… In Haiti, for example, it takes 203 days to register a company, which is 201 days longer than in Australia. In Sierra Leone it costs 1,268% of average income, compared with nothing in Denmark. To register in Ethiopia, a would-be entrepreneur must deposit the equivalent of 18 years’ average income in a bank account, which is then frozen. In Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, recording a property sale involves 21 procedures and takes 274 days. Official fees amount to 27% of the value of the transaction. In Norway the task takes less than a day and costs only 2.5% of the price of the property.

I've written before about Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital, one of the great books of our time. If you haven't read it, do. You won't regret it. de Soto's outlining of the importance of property rights and the problems caused by such bureaucratic problems as those outlined above is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how third world countries can prosper.

Their lack of prosperity is not because of poor resources. Some are blessed with wonderful natural resources; others not. Both those with and those without can both thrive. Their poverty is the result of taking the decision, in effect, to remain poor. The conditions under which they can prosper are known, and available, if they - specifically, those in power - choose to avail themselves of them. The job of anyone who cares about the alleviation of human misery and the spread of wealth is to persuade them that the solution to their poverty is in their own hands.