Title: Development and the Making of Investment Treaties in Africa
Date: 3 September 2022
Time: 09:00 Chicago, 11:00 Halifax, 15:00 Lagos, 16:00 Jo'burg, 17:00 Nairobi
Zoom Registration Link: https://bit.ly/3PYlDhd
Guest Lecturer: Dr. Dominic Npoanlari Dagbanja is a Senior Lecturer in Law at The University of Western Australia (UWA) Law School; Research Fellow, African Procurement Law Unit, Department of Mercantile Law, Stellenbosch University, South Africa; and a Fellow of Higher Education Academy. Dr Dagbanja taught Company Law at UWA Law School from 2016-2020. In August 2020, he introduced a new unit, International Investment Law. Dr Dagbanja is a recipient of the UWA Law School Excellence in Teaching Award 2021. His article, The Intersection of Public Procurement Law and Policy and International Investment Law, won the 2020 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development-Society of International Economic Law Award for Research on Investment and Development. Dr Dagbanja served as an International Investment Agreements/Investment Policy Consultant to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 2020/2021. He has a teaching, research and practice interests in Company Law, International Commercial Law, International Investment Law, International Trade Law, Public Procurement Law and Immigration Law and Inequality. Dr Dagbanja is the author of The Investment Treaty Regime and Public Interest Regulation in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). He has published extensively in leading peer-review international journals and yearbooks, including Public Procurement Law Review, Transnational Legal Theory, Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, Cambridge Law Review, Statute Law Review, and Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy. He received his PhD in Law from The University of Auckland, a Master of Laws in Government Procurement Law from The George Washington University, and Master of Laws in Transnational Business Practice, from the University of the Pacific and a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Ghana.
Discussant: Louis Koen is an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Public Law at the University of Johannesburg. His research primarily focuses on the interaction between sustainable development and international economic law. He focuses on how the branches of international economic law can contribute to or undermine the achievement of sustainable development, with a special focus on vulnerable groups such as informal economy workers. He has presented at various international and local conferences on sustainable development, labour and international economic law and publishes on these topics. He also provides training as part of the FDI Moot ECOWAS initiative. This initiative seeks to create a more prominent space for African students and scholars in the international investment law field, which is generally dominated by the west. A key interest is also international investment law, especially how it negatively affects African countries. He has guest lectured at various African universities, including Africa Nazarene University and the National University of Lesotho, on international economic law and informal cross-border traders.