Analysis

It is proposed that South Africa as a developing country needs to have a central bank that has the semblance of a developmental central bank, and that takes care of consumers, different than the orthodox, neoliberal central bank that focuses on price stability and lowering of inflation and expect market forces to protect consumers. The Twin Peaks model of financial regulation where the central bank is explicitly appointed as the guardian of financial stability, could be a small step on the way of the SARB becoming such semblance of a developmental central bank.

This opinion piece aims to ascertain the extent to which the new Bank of Namibia Act 1 of 2020 (the Act) imports the neoliberal rules of central banking and it also assesses the level of departure, if any, from the conventional central bank mandates couched in law. The piece further highlights the domestication of the rules of the Central Bank Model Law adopted by the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The ailing financial sector in Ghana necessitated an immediate pragmatic response to realign and reposition the financial sector back to its glory days. Depositors’ monies are mostly squandered or bolted with by directors and managers of financial institutions in Ghana. The recent clean-up in the financial sector has awakened uproars from some Ghanaians, notable amongst them are the customers of the affected financial institutions. While some vowed to boycott the 2020 elections, others instituted a civil action in court on the grounds of negligence against the central bank. It will be intriguing to know the legal principles for adjudicating this matter in the high court, whether private law principles under tort law (on the basis of which the customers have sued BoG), or public law principles under administrative law (which seems more appropriate for a public body). With the extent of insolvency, licensing irregularities and insufficient minimum capital requirements among financial institutions, the greatest fatherly role played by BoG was not to spare the rod to spoil the child in its quest to salvage the financial sector.

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.