“Africa’s riches” include its law students, and Africa has the means to unleash that resource for its own benefit and the world’s. To close the circle and exhort the law students and young lawyers of Africa: seize the opportunities, face the challenges, and remember, Nelson Mandela’s words; I never lose. I either win or learn.

The Beijing Treaty deals with the intellectual property rights of performers in audiovisual performances, notably by bolstering five kinds of exclusive economic rights for the beneficiaries’ performances fixed in an audiovisual format: the rights of reproduction, distribution, rental, making available and broadcasting and communication to the public.  As home to Africa’s largest movie industry (Nollywood), the third largest movie industry globally, as well as one of the most dynamic global entertainment industries, this Treaty bears significant implications for actors and creative performers in Nigeria.

In sum, I would say that as a team our moot experience has been shaped by perseverance, thirst, research, practice, and teamwork. Any African students who learn from our lessons can become phenomenal

Supporting moot court competition through funding initiatives is one way to offer support. Another way is to offer knowledge and expertise on substantive law as well as presentation skills.

This symposium presents two interesting memoirs of African students who have participated in these moots and have chosen paths of graduate studies that are related to international economic law and development studies. Mr Mishael Wambua a student at Strathmore University Law and last year winner and best oralist at the John H. Jackson writes about his experience and advice to future mooters. Ms Purity Maritim a former participant of the same moot and now a masters student at the Graduate Institute in Geneva also writes about her experiences and what she learnt from the moot. The other two contributions are from Mr Christian Campbell the Assistant Director FDI moot and Tsotang Tsietsi lecturer and moot coach from the National University of Lesotho. These two contributions present two interesting perspectives on the many directions that moot court competitions can take for Africa in the near future.

Given the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the present need for online educational materials and resources, the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law (AVL) is happy to draw our attention to their free online educational resources. 

The Mandela Institute is a leading university centre undertaking research, policy development, and capacity building at the intersection between economics and law. Its mandate is to advance the field of economic regulation.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) is issuing a worldwide call for papers for an Agora symposium to be published in the October 2020 issue of the Journal.  The topic – “The International Legal Order and the Global Pandemic” – recognizes that the present crisis raises foundational questions for the international legal order that extend beyond the immediate challenges to public health and economic stability.

The Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal (PER/PELJ) invites contributions from authors with regard to the impact of the COVID-19 on the future regulation of foreign investment in developing states.

In this brief post, I want to make sense of Prabhash Ranjan’s brief critique of TWAIL perspectives on international investment law. My main aim is not to mount a defense of TWAIL project(s) on investment law because that might be done more eloquently by others. Instead, I want to make some brief comments about the political valence of, and the assumptions behind, the reservations that Professor Ranjan articulated in this post, and which also appear in his recent book on India and Bilateral Investment Treaties.