International Relations

Utilising interdisciplinary methodologies for IEL research in the African context is not without its challenges. Access to empirical data is still difficult. Meandering your way past the bureaucracy and protocols that ‘gatekeep’ vital information is also tricky. However, all these challenges and experiences all add up to our journey as researchers

Critical perspectives can be both distinct from and form part of the broadly defined ‘socio-legal’ approach to social inquiry. To adopt a critical perspective is to commit to the project of demystifying and disrupting dominant narratives, interpretations and ways of both knowing and understanding legal phenomena. It represents a quest for truth and offers alternative ways of seeing the world around us. As such, critical perspectives encompass doctrinal, empirical and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of law. In short, it is the purpose of critical approaches to challenge and disrupt that which has been taken to be a ‘given’ in mainstream discourses and narratives

This Symposium, and the contributions carry on the conversation by examining the ways in which the contributors have harnessed theory and method in their critical scholarship on IEL in Africa. Continuing to build the knowledge base on IEL that is both rigorous and relevant to Africa has a lot to do with the lens through which research work is conducted.

We are proud to present this book symposium on Professor Eleanor Fox & Mor Bakhoum’s wonderful new book titled Making Markets Work for Africa: Markets, Developments, and Competition Law in Sub-Saharan Africa. This 2019 book from Oxford University Press is the most comprehensive look at the role that competition law can play in promoting economic development as well as fairness and equity in the diverse economies of Sub-Saharan Africa.

One would be justified in thinking that AU member states have intentionally created a court which they consciously know they would hardly use given the inertia identified above. If the reforms that would extend standing to private parties are not undertaken, there is little guarantee that Member States will suddenly change their habits. Assuming for once that they trigger the mechanism, it is also very likely that, consistent with their practice for political solutions to legal problems, they would not proceed beyond the consultation and good offices stages provided in Articles 7 and 8 of the Dispute Settlement Protocol.