Political Economy

The liberalisation of air transport has long been framed as a cornerstone of Africa’s economic integration agenda. From the early aspirations of the Yamoussoukro Declaration to the contemporary ambitions of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), African states have repeatedly acknowledged the centrality of aviation to trade, mobility, and development. Yet, progress has remained uneven and contested. The book situates African aviation liberalisation within broader debates in international economic law and Global South regionalism, arguing that implementation failures stem not from weak legal texts but from institutional design and political economy constraints.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), perhaps the most successful regional economic community in Africa, at least until recently, turns fifty-one (51) on May 28, 2026. ECOWAS, which was established on 28 May 1975 was tasked with the goal of promoting economic and political integration among its member states. Specifically, ECOWAS Treaty offers a key summary of its vision: “promoting co-operation and integration, leading to the establishment of an Economic Union in West Africa in order to raise the living standards of the peoples, and to maintain and enhance economic stability, foster relations-among Member States and contribute to the progress and development of the African Continent.”

Guinea occupies a structurally significant position in the global minerals economy as the world’s largest holder of bauxite reserves and second leading producer of the ore, which is indispensable for aluminium production and increasingly recognised as strategically important to global industrial supply chains. This update examines Guinea’s intensifying resource nationalism in the global bauxite sector, focusing on the revocation of mining licences, the resulting high-value international arbitration claims, and the government’s planned legal defence. It situates these developments within broader African debates on bauxite’s strategic importance, mineral governance, and efforts to reclaim sovereign control and value from critical raw materials.

This quarterly report argues that Africa’s ongoing debt crisis is deeply intertwined with the legacies of colonialism, the political pressures of post-independence governance, and the global financial system’s exploitative practices. Recently liberated African states in the 1970s and 1980s faced the dual challenge of fulfilling liberation promises, such as expanding education, healthcare, and infrastructure, while relying on favorable commodity prices to sustain economic growth. This combination of political urgency and economic optimism led to extensive borrowing, often underpinned by forced loans and unrealistic economic forecasting.

The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement: Legal and Policy Frameworks provides a comprehensive assessment of the African economic integration through the prism and principles of international economic law. The analysis is contextualized within the prevailing regional economic integrations, the WTO and the peculiarity of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Similarly, legal analysis is bolstered by the political economy of the AfCFTA, illustrating the complex interplay of diverse factors that shape the AfCFTA.

The co-editors, Chidebe Nwankwo, Sikelela Ndlazi, and Angelo Dube, invite contributions to an edited volume entitled ‘Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Land Use Regumes under the AfCFTA.” The volume seeks to catalogue the prospects and challenges of extant land use regimes in African states towards actualizing the objectives of the anticipated single market. The goal of the volume is to offer fresh insight from multidisciplinary perspectives on the historical, institutional, political, and legal and policy dimensions of land and the sustainable development of the member states under the AfCFTA.

Professor Kofi Kufuor, in his recent book on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), dedicates a chapter to African sub-national governments (SNGs), cities and the AfCFTA (generally see Kufuor, 2024: chapter 6, 148-160). In this chapter, Kufuor makes a compelling observation that cities and sub-national governments (SNGs) are absent from the AfCFTA complex (Kufuor, 2024: 148). He proceeds to explain this absence and the need for their inclusion. This review critically reflects on Kufuor's assessment, drawing on the emerging literature on paradiplomacy in the African context and the engagement of SNGs and cities with integration in Africa.

Recent developments in the cryptocurrency space have brought the 1942 Churchill words to the fore. Is this the beginning of the end of traditional currency? Or the end of the beginning of digital currency? In April 2021, the Central African Republic (CAR) signed a law adopting bitcoin as an official local currency, alongside the CFA franc. This was part of the country’s broad-based plans to solve exchange rate challenges and integrate cryptocurrencies into its financial system. The signing made the CAR the first African country and the second in the world after El Salvador (which took a similar step on September 7, 2021) to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender. However, CAR’s bitcoin experiment was a controversial move and sparked a backlash from regional and international financial organizations like the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, the CAR’s Presidency believes that the move will “open up new opportunities” for the country. In this paper, I examine some of the political and economic implications of the “Bitcoin” experiment in CAR by answering two questions: is the adoption economically viable? Or is it an attempt to undermine the French-backed CFA franc and close ties with Russia?

This symposium’s idea was born out of at least four reflections on that question – the experiences of the four editors. While our experiences are unique, we could agree on one thing: there are junior international legal scholars struggling with various challenges that are inherent to the field. The hierarchies of academic institutions, the political economy of modern universities, geographical location, language, race, gender, and mental health struggles are some of the issues of concern to junior legal researchers, and often even to those advanced in their career. Difficulties emerge not only from structures of oppression and exclusion but also from insufficient familiarity with basic aspects of academic life. All four of us agreed that at the beginning of our careers we had/have little understanding of how to prepare a book proposal, an abstract for an interesting conference, a polite rejection email for an attractive offer, a teaching plan, a justification for chosen methods, and much more.

The Afronomicslaw.org Academic Forum Guest Lecture Series brings experts and discussants together to discuss broad issues arising from international economic law as they relate to Africa and the Global South.