Analysis

While the establishment of a free trade area is categorically provided for as one of precursor stages to the AEC, it is appears to have been envisioned as being established primarily at the regional level (article 2 (d)), and not necessarily at the continental level. This was very much in line with the strategy to build the AEC through the RECs. The AEC Treaty did not get into the modalities of the establishment of the prospective free trade area, neither did it mention a further protocol in that regard. Whether this omission was deliberate, is subject to speculation, but perhaps it may have been based on the belief that RECs would be the drivers of free trade areas as opposed to a focused continental framework or mechanism.

On Saturday 10 August, African Nazarene University prevailed over Strathmore University in the final of the 2019 FDI Moot All Africa Regional, and will receive the 2019 Wilmer Hale Prize (USD1500)

Ghana and its founding father, Kwame Nkrumah, have played a pivotal role in the Africa’s revolution, integration and the evolution of Pan Africanism in general.  Besides his prolific writings, which cemented his place as a foremost proponent of Pan Africanism, Nkrumah was not only a freedom fighter, but also one of the recognisable organisers of the 1945 Manchester Pan Africa congress which primarily advocated for decolonisation of the continent and the supplanting of colonialism with African socialism.

the responsibility to build a nation rests upon its policy-makers, lawyers and accountants. It is a collective one. The next step is to bring all stakeholders to the round-table and contribute to the global tax system from a protectionist standpoint. The lure of subscribing to the global fiscal commons must be tempered with the need to protect the tax bases and revenue of the fiscal sovereign. The time to act is now and right.

This essay will briefly highlight some key policy and legal steps South Africa (SA) has adopted to take advantage of the gains of IP and innovation for its national development. It will then draw lessons from that experience that IP negotiations in the AfCTA can benefit from.

This analysis demonstrates three key points. First, it is becoming untenable for central banks to avoid incorporating their human rights impacts into their decision-making and operations. Second, a human rights approach offers central banks a new tool for understanding the true costs and benefits of their operations. Third, central banks can meet their human rights responsibilities without compromising the independence they need to meet their monetary and financial responsibilities.

Local communities, for their part, consider investor responsibility a necessary part of the fabric of international law and politics. While the AU works towards framing business and human rights in Africa along with global developments regarding a treaty on business and human rights and treaties such as the Morocco/Nigeria BIT, African peoples and communities continue to adopt available mechanisms as avenues for communicating their positions on these important issues and exercising agency on a subject that is of utmost importance to their wellbeing.

This short piece argues that while these arguments may hold sway, host African states continue to have primary responsibility and should rise to their obligation to protect human rights of impacted communities against the harmful effects of TNCs’ activities. Moreover, the controversies surrounding the extraterritorial jurisdiction of states and the silence of international law regarding enforceable obligation on TNCs demonstrate the difficulty in embracing the newer approaches regarding the roles of home states and TNCs.

Over the last decade, and especially in the mining sector, African state actors have begun to denounce unequal mining contracts, and are increasingly reviewing mining contracts accordingly. While African host states are seemingly taking it upon themselves to remedy real and perceived imbalances vis-à-vis investors in their mining contracts, a key question remains what structural reasons have led to such imbalances in the first place, and whose responsibility it is to address these structural issues: host states, investors, home states, international financial institutions, or all the above? This brief discussion contextualizes how responsibilities to redress unequal mining contracts may be shared.

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.