International Trade Law

The AfCFTA’s Digital Trade Rules are Not Fit for Africa

African heads of state are slated to meet this weekend for the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union and they could be prompted to make an unforced error that could weigh heavily in the continent’s plans to promote digital industrialization and the bridging of the digital divide.

Consultancy Opportunity: Economic Commission for Africa and Africa Trade Policy Centre - Trade and Environment Consultant

The primary objective of this assignment is to contribute to ATPC’s various workstreams centering around the interface of trade policy on the one hand and climate change and environmental concerns on the other within the context of African integration led by trade. The addition of a trade-and-environment expert to ATPC’s pool of experts will allow the Centre to expand, deepen and refine its work and provide opportunities for more robust and in-depth analysis of initiatives taken in this area.

Call for Applications: LL.M. in International Trade and Investment Law in Africa

The Master's of Law (LLM) degree in International Trade and Investment Law in Africa is the first of its kind to be offered in Africa. It establishes a higher education and training programme based in and focused on, Africa with full exposure to the international world of trade and investment.

Symposium on Early Career International Law Academia: Gender Disparity in Academic Citations: Tips for Rectifying the Gender Gap among Early Career International Law Academics and Practitioners

The impetus for this blog post was the excellent book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez. Among other things, the book highlights evidence for the existence of a gender gap in the frequency of citations: plainly, women are cited much less than men in academic works. I would argue that this gender gap is likely to be equally pervasive in the context of international legal scholarship, and particularly prejudicial to junior women practitioners and early career researchers (“ECRs”). With this phenomenon in mind, this piece proceeds in three parts. First, it reviews the more general evidence for the existence of a gender gap in academic citations and legal scholarship. Second, it provides a personal perspective by reviewing gender equality in my own citation practice. Finally, it concludes by recommending best practices to minimize the gender gap, with an emphasis on the role of ECRs.

Roundtable Webinar Invitation: Trade and Distribution

This roundtable will ask what insights or productive questions can be advanced to make sense of the changing ground in international economic law, and whether these ongoing shifts can be leveraged towards progressive and equitable distributive outcomes. Our areas of inquiry include: the US and domestic trade policy; developing countries' concerns vis-à-vis global distribution; distributional consequences within developing countries; and effects of race and gender.

Pre-colonial Trade in Africa and International Law: Setting a Research Agenda

It is accepted that legal doctrine is a normative discipline, which is not only describing and systematising norms, but also predominantly a discipline which takes normative positions and makes choices among values and interests. Consequently, the quest to find “better law” by adopting certain interpretative or normative positions often leads to elements external to law and legal doctrine such as philosophy, morals, history, sociology, economy, and politics. Hence, looking for better law involves empirical research particularly as better, in the context of this post, refers to a historical and sociological perspective on the balancing of the Eurocentric make-up of international law. Thus, the teaching of precolonial African trade usages should be explicitly embedded into the public international law (and international trade law) curriculum in Nigerian universities. This has already been done in international relations programmes in some Nigerian universities.

Domestic Effects of International Law in Nigeria: The Case of Trade Agreements

In this piece, I argue that Nigeria’s non-compliant behaviour is prevalent and entrenched in the field of international trade law, and that this behaviour is largely influenced by Nigeria’s perception of its national economic interests, which are underpinned by the protectionist policy of import-substitution. But Nigeria’s poor adherence to international trade rules should also be seen in the context of its general lack of commitment to the rule of law.