Economic Growth

Third world approaches to international law (TWAIL) is part of the critical branch of international legal scholarship and an intellectual and political movement. It is not easy to engage with TWAIL because of its heterogeneity. TWAIL serves as a kind of umbrella category that includes different theoretical and often conflicting ideological traditions. However, at the cost of oversimplification, it may be argued that TWAIL represents an endeavour to comprehend the history, structure, and process of international law from the perspective of third world countries that includes both third world governments and third world people

This paper aligns with Godwell Nhamo who states that ‘if the SDGs are to be a vehicle for poverty eradication in Africa, then the continent needs to do more for itself, including domestic mobilization of financial resources’. In essence, effective partnerships or collaborations (e.g. between government, academia, public sector, private sector, civic society and local communities amongst others) need to be developed in order to achieve sustainable SDGs outputs.

Sub-regional judiciaries and implementing bodies in Africa should endeavour to avoid what the Kagame Report termed ‘[t]he chronic failure to see through African Union decisions [which] has resulted in a crisis of implementation.’ Hence, ECOWAS and the ECCJ should apply political pressure on Member States to implement the ECCJ judgments. Also, dualist countries in the sub-region should domesticate the Revised Treaty and the Protocol on the ECCJ into their national laws. This will enhance the implementation of the ECCJ decisions in the sub-region.

Intra Africa trade remains at its lowest ebb and perhaps this sad state of affairs can only be remedied by the actualization of the envisaged Africa Economic Community (AEC). To this extent RIAs, such as those under study in this paper, offer viable building blocks and learning curves for negotiating in the much larger multilateral trade system.

At the heart of the WTO system is the commitment to the foundational principles of MFN and national treatment. But in a world predicated upon national interest and economic power, the most powerful may not consider multilateral rule-based commitments to be optimal to the achievement of their national interests. One feature of the WTO dispute settlement system is that every Member of the WTO is entitled to have their dispute determined under agreed rules. This is a basic feature of rules-based dispute settlement. The rules, impartially applied, have no regard to the economic power of the parties. The settlement of disputes by recourse to rules of general application yield outcomes that do not depend upon which member is more powerful.

The huge investments in the extractive sector should, in principle, be a catalyst for economic growth, job opportunities, and development. Often, these investments have been a source of environmental degradation, socio-economic malaise and despair. Equatorial Guinea, for instance, is a classic example of the ‘resource curse mystery in Africa. To leverage extractive resources for development, African countries are faced with legal, fiscal, implementation, infrastructure, regulatory and institutional challenges. This contribution addresses state and investor responsibility in the sustainable development of Africa’s extractive sector. It highlights four responsibility indices that will guide states and investors in fostering a shared value approach to an inclusive and sustainable development of Africa’s extractive sector.

Rudahindwa’s contribution lies in his articulation of the need for institutions and legal frameworks to reflect these multiple objectives of African RECs. In this regard, he ably demonstrates how the specific objectives of NAFTA, ASEAN, MERCOSUR and the EU have informed the nature of the institutions that manage their respective organisations and their legal frameworks, including how they address issues such as the relationship between the laws of the organisations and their member states, the bindingness of agreed commitments and laws, and dispute settlement.

The call for an open, rules-based approach to investment facilitation at the multilateral level is informed by a tipping point in the international investment arena. As discussed below, this paradigm shift and various precedental challenges have made it imperative to seek international investment policy coherence.

In this blog post I will consider policy initiatives for tackling the issue of illicit flow of funds out of African countries and the implications of these activities on investment and trade in the context of the AfCFTA. Combating Illicit Financial Flows has been a difficult task for African countries and, the best approach to tackle this endemic problem may be to develop and implement comprehensive mechanisms that will encourage the disclosure of these illegal activities in a timely manner. Such disclosure can best be realized by the adoption of a regional whistleblower protection directive.

The necessity to change the measurement strategy of the AGOA and ACP-EU trade agreements presents a challenge not only to African countries but also to the US and the European Union to establish a common understanding on the need to widen the scope of the measure. All the partners involved require a comprehensive measurement strategy to quantify the real impact of AGOA and ACP-EU on people’s lives.