Africa

The AfSIL invites you to join their 9th annual conference which will be held virtually on 30th October, 2020. The line-up of the speakers and program for the day are below.

The quest for Africa’s decolonization is existential and must therefore go beyond platitudes and rhetoric. The exhortation by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni on the risk of decolonization losing its “revolutionary potential” is germane: decolonization “comes from within, as a revolutionary concept that speaks about rehumanization—which is a fundamental planetary project”.

This colloquium will examine Africa’s response to the pandemic, in particular, those relating to international economic law. This colloquium fills the gap left by the absence of our biennial conference in 2021 and will instead hold virtually in July 2021.

Africa's financial sector is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years; with projections, financial technology services, notably digital credit, are expected to expand to a USD 150 billion business by 2022. However, the rapid proliferation of financial services and products, notably micro-finance and digital credit, has led to a worrying trend of predatory lending practices over the past twenty years. This trend may negatively impact Africa's economic development objectives in the long run, while exploiting its most vulnerable.

There are many great things to say about the volume including the discussion about Africanization of international investment law and finding Africa's voice in it. Much of what one would have expected to see about Africa and ICSID is in there.

This analysis addresses the question whether it is constitutional and prudent for African states to agree to a treaty term such as national treatment, which limits their sovereign and constitutional powers to regulate in the public interest without having to account to foreign investors. The constitutions of many African states endorse the principle that sovereignty resides in the people.

This post analyzes the potential impact of COVID-19 on the African continent given systemic healthcare vulnerabilities and the need for contextualized containment strategies. It examines the historical role of international financial institutions in limiting domestic health spending and capacity. This post also delves into re-conceptualizing responsibility for pandemic and epidemic diseases.

According to Professor Caroline Ncube in the foreword, this book is an important and timely contribution to the discussion of music platforms and is the first work that considers multi-sided platforms from the perspectives of copyright, competition and privacy under South African and Nigerian laws.

The newly-formed International Economic Law Collective has already brought something new to how we understand economic thought in international law. Compared to other groups in international law, the Collective is distinct because it places the concept of equality as both an analytical focal point in the work its members produce and as a main feature of how the group organizes itself.

Drawing from comparative experiences, it is opined that a systematic academic study of private international law might create the required strong political will and institutional support (which is absent at the moment) that is necessary to give private international law its true place in Africa.