Analysis

Africa’s regional central banks, and the projects of monetary coordination and monetary union they oversee, arise directly out of treaty frameworks. These frameworks provide vital opportunities for calibrating these policy objectives in the form of legal and institutional design. The goal must be to ascertain the components of a progressive, pro-development approach that will seek to balance the objective of financial stability with the objective of maintaining sufficient macroeconomic policy space, and the objective of central bank independence with the objective of accountability to the public interest.

May 24, 2020

It is the segment of the news bulletin that many viewers skip, the section of the newspaper that many readers skim, the panel of the law conference during which many listeners in the audience yarn. And yet few things affect our ability to eke out a living as drastically as central banking.

With the looming post-Covid 19 crisis and the potential loss of liquidity in the banking market, the Islamic financial system (internationally known as "Islamic Finance") may provide an alternative to the African banking model for customers and could provide additional ways for domestic banks to finance themselves.

My early analysis of this case suggests it is as significant if not more significant than the Supreme Court of Kenya’s 2017 nullification of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s presidential election. In addition to the significance of the orders, analysis of this five-judge bench are compelling and make it a landmark judgement not only in Kenya, but beyond.

The “Research Symposium” is an initiative of the ILA-Brazil International Law Agendas blog to stimulate the debate on ideas that emerge from research projects in international law in Brazilian law schools. In this inaugural symposium, we present the research project “International law 'in the palm of our hand’: reading between the lines of Brazilian International Law textbooks.”

The loan conditionalities are spelled out in the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP). Despite the talk about “ownership” of these memoranda and “active contribution of authorities” of the loan beneficiary, the drafting is done mostly by the IMF staff. It was reported in the media, the push towards a “structural and governance reform” of SOEs, too, came from the IMF.

On May 5th, 2021, following public enormous pressure, the United States decided to support the waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic. With the United States blocking of the proposal now out of the way, at least for now, negotiations will now begin. 

It is important that the Global South countries and particularly African countries device approaches that aim at entrenching integration in their own regions. This is absolutely crucial now that African States have the ambition of increasing intra- African trade. Secondly, African governments need to approach FTA and EPAs with the countries in Global North with extra caution and with their development needs, economic situations, and integration ambitions in mind.

This article describes how arbitration and conciliation were treated in the old laws, and briefly outlines the new arbitration and conciliation proclamation by highlighting the unique provisions and in doing so contrasts and compares them to the old laws.

It is imperative that a strategy and approach be undertaken to address MNE business models and challenges regarding taxing the digitalized economy, and that legislative measures are enacted to preserve or expand Africa’s tax base. Overall, the potential gains from Digital Sales Tax are significant, as inclusion of digital services tax, may subsequently increase revenue that may be utilised for developing States, particularly at a time of high State expenditure to alleviate the economic and social impact of Covid-19. You could include some benefits from countries that have imposed unilateral taxation legislation highlighted above to showcase the potential gains.