Africa

Victor Ediagbonya’s Corporate Governance in Africa offers a thoughtful and carefully structured engagement with one of the most persistent challenges in African corporate governance: the continued prevalence of governance failures despite the widespread adoption of sophisticated legal and regulatory frameworks. Rather than attributing these failures solely to doctrinal gaps, the book invites a deeper examination of the institutional environments within which corporate governance operates, particularly in the banking sector.

This paper provides a comprehensive scholarly and evaluative overview of Victor Ediagbonya’s Corporate Governance in Africa, highlighting its central arguments, methodological strengths, theoretical contributions, and significance as an important contribution to knowledge in corporate governance, banking regulation, and African political economy.

Research on corporate governance is frequent and covered by many disciplines including of course law and, in many cases, interdisciplinary. What is not frequent however, is an investigation into corporate governance in the African region specific to industry sectors. This is an important gap that needed to be filled, and Dr Ediagbonya is one of the first scholars to commence filling it. His book, Corporate Governance in Africa, is a region specific and industry specific investigation on an appropriate and reliable corporate governance framework which is both stable, yet adaptable for the peculiarities of the region.

This book is an excellent contribution to the analysis of corporate governance frameworks from emerging countries. It analyses a timely issue of corporate governance in the banking industry of two African countries, Nigeria and South Africa, with some of the largest economies based on gross domestic product (see the introduction). The banking sector in Africa is a sector of significant growth, although significantly concentrated. McKinsey insights points out that ‘performance in Africa’s banking system is driven by a diverse mix of markets, each with its own unique strategies and challenges.

It is my utmost pleasure to welcome you to our 8th Biennial Conference. After successfully hosting in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania, we have finally breached the “Francophone wall”, as one Member of the Network’s Advisory Board noted upon learning this year’s destination. For the first time since its creation in 2008, the AfIELN Conference will take place in “Francophone” Africa, in North Africa, and in the MENA region. Morocco is therefore threefold symbolic. ______________________________________________________________________ Chers amis du Réseau africain de droit économique international (AfIELN), C’est avec un immense plaisir que je vous souhaite la bienvenue à notre 8e Conférence biennale. Après avoir accueilli avec succès des éditions au Ghana, au Kenya, au Nigeria, en Afrique du Sud et en Tanzanie, nous avons enfin franchi le « mur francophone », comme l’a souligné un membre du Conseil Consultatif du Réseau en apprenant la destination de cette année. Pour la première fois depuis sa création en 2008, la Conférence d’AfIELN se tiendra en Afrique « francophone », en Afrique du Nord et dans la région MENA. Le Maroc revêt donc une triple symbolique.

This conversation is based on a report which develops a new framework for understanding the premium by introducing the concept of an “institutionalized” African risk premium. In doing so, the study identifies three distinct forms of the African risk premium: (a) the perceived African risk premium; (b) the real African risk premium; and (c) the institutionalized African risk premium. You can download the Report on the "Repository" section of our website.

Economic sanctions have been imposed on dozens of countries and thousands of individuals, triggering humanitarian crises and creating economic chaos, often with little accountability. Sanctions can cause particular harm to vulnerable populations, including women, children, migrants, and the poor.

Organised in partnership with the Fondation Afric’Avenir, this edition seeks to rethink the divide between the formal and informal economy through a decolonial comparative legal approach. It also aims to contribute to the consolidation of a decolonial comparative law community across the African continent and beyond. The overarching theme of the 2027 edition is decolonial comparative law and the informal/formal economy. The workshop takes the informal economy seriously as a site of legality in its own right, examined through a decolonial and comparative lens attentive to legal pluralism and situated practices.

The conference seeks to provide a rigorous, practice-oriented forum for interrogating foundational questions in reparation in international law. How have international courts and tribunals conceptualized the forms, functions, and limits of reparation? What distinctive insights and claims emerge from African experiences with historical and contemporary injustice, including colonialism, slavery, apartheid, and serious human rights violations? And how might African perspectives continue to shape the progressive development of international law in this area?

Fireside Chat on Trade Policy and Regional Integration: Trade Policy Is Not Just for Policymakers The session was a fireside chat titled "Trade Policy Is Not Just for Policymakers", facilitated by Mishael Wambua, Component Lead at GIZ Support Programme for Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). He discussed the importance of fostering an awareness of trade policy and regional integration in Africa.