Analysis

The book is a contribution to the debate and literature on reforming SDT in the WTO, particularly, how to define and delimit access to SDT in the WTO. The book interrogates the problem of access to SDT resulting from the lack of a concrete criteria to identify a developing country at the WTO or more aptly, a country with a justifiable need for SDT. It answers the question of how to accommodate different levels of development among WTO members, while ensuring that the costs of multilateralism are shared equitably.

China is the largest developing country with a GDP of USD17.82 trillion, while Africa boasts of a conglomeration of the highest number of developing countries under the largest regional free trade mechanism – the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) – with a collective GDP of USD3.4 trillion. China is Africa’s largest bilateral trade partner. Trade between China and Africa stood at USD282 billion in 2023. China and Africa appreciate the significance of IP rights to fostering bilateral, and intra-regional (Africa), trade. Little wonders, therefore, international cooperation on IP rights forms a key strategy for achieving the objectives of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the AfCFTA agreement. As the 9th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which was established in 2000, holds in China from 4-6 September with possible focus on green energy, ICTs and technology development, it is important to examine the continued prominence of IP issues in China-Africa relations.

The Protocol on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Protocol aims to promote science, industrialisation, services, investment, digital trade, technology and technology transfer, and regional value chains. This aligns closely with the African Union's Agenda 2063, Africa’s collective blueprint for transforming the continent into a global powerhouse of the future. This analysis argues that the IPR Protocol offers a viable pathway for African countries to foster technology transfer, innovation and technological advancement by creating a unified market, encouraging innovation and competition, enhancing industrialization and infrastructure development, and strengthening human capital development.

There is quite some work that has been done on investment regulation and human rights protection in the context of Africa. One of such works is Fola Adele’s book, International Investment Law and Policy in Africa, Exploring a Human Rights Based Approach to Investment Regulation and Dispute Settlement (2018), where he discusses sustainable development and human rights protection. Most significantly, Adeleke acknowledges that the role and importance of public interest issues, sovereignty of states and other binding obligations that interfere with investment treaty norms have not been given adequate attention. This is why I welcome Dr. Dominic Npoanlari Dagbanja’s book “The Investment Treaty Regime and Public interest Regulation in Africa” with lots of admiration. This work does not only provide a wealth of resource for scholars seeking to research on such a thorny issue, but also serves as a fresh reminder of the important yet difficult conversation about the need for African states to recast future investment treaties in the light of their constitutional mandates and responsibilities.

When Kenya’s history is written, June 25, 2024 will live in infamy. It will be remembered as the day that an organic GenZ peaceful protest movement against financial austerity imposed by the government of President Ruto was repressed with a violent militarized response. Abductions and disappearances of protesters, internet shutdowns, extrajudicial executions, and threats of shutting down TV Stations signal that President Ruto is ready defend his vastly unpopular and unnecessary financial austerity measures at any cost. Even more, the deployment of the Kenyan Defense Forces in response to legitimate GenZ protests is inconsistent with Article 241 (2) (c) of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya that requires prior approval of the National. The deployment of these forces will only serve to militarily install austerity and to shut down legitimate protests and public debate.

In many African countries, the protection and promotion of human rights is enshrined in national laws including domestic constitutions, policies, and guidelines. Many African countries are signatories to a plethora of conventions on human rights including the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. However, in several African countries, ordinarily, socio-economic rights are not enforceable because socio-economic rights are not explicitly provided in many national constitutions. Furthermore, right to research as an evolutive and burgeoning framework in the African copyright system adds to this mix. Scholars including Okorie have advocated for the development of the right to research as a complete or explicit defence to copyright infractions or as user rights. However, the development of an explicit right to research in the African copyright context is afflicted with a plethora of obstacles. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has further restricted access to information and academic materials especially in digital formats and furthermore, many African libraries and institutions are ill-equipped to perform their role of enabling access to information. Hence, this recent book – The Right to Research in Africa: Exploring the Copyright and Human Rights Interface by Desmond Oriakhogba is an important and innovative addition to this debate. Oriakhogba argues for a reconceptualization of the African copyright system from explicit human rights law perspectives as means of localising the right to research in the African context.

In different epochs of our world, the idea of copyright has been thought about and debated by different scholars and philosophers. Most commonly, such debates find resonance in scholarly interlocutory about intellectual property law justificatory theories. On limited occasions, copyright scholarship ventures into studying the jurisprudence of copyright, that is the consciousness and the conscience of the discipline. In his offering, The Right to Research in Africa: Exploring the Copyright and Human Rights Interface, Oriakhogba remarkably studies copyright in the context of Human Rights. From the onset, it is refreshing that Oriakhogba takes the task of engaging copyright outside of the strict positivist and largely mercantilist strictures that often insist on thinking about copyright purely within the ambit of trade. The book’s argument is propounded in five chapters. Following the introduction, the second chapter examines the state of research in Africa, and the challenge that copyright poses to the question of access to information. The third chapter places its focus on international and regional human rights framework. The fourth chapter, which is the focus of this essay, discusses the national constitutions and frameworks for the protection of human rights to ascertain whether they support the development of the right to research. The fifth chapter, which concludes the book, summarily uses the insights from prior chapter’s to substantively respond to the question whether the right to research is justifiable in the context of Africa.

The Right to Research in Africa: Exploring the Interface between Copyright and Human Rights, a book authored by Desmond Oriakhogba, was published by Springer Nature in 2023. The book examined international and regional human rights instruments to which African countries have subscribed, as well as those relevant to the African context, and the national bills of rights and constitutions in Africa with the aim of constructing an explicit right to research in Africa.

With the recent decision by the African Heads of States to adopt the Protocol on Investment to the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area, Dr Dominic Dagbanja’s monograph on The Investment Treaty Regime and Public interest in Africa is a welcome addition to the growing list of monographs on Africa’s foreign investment law regimes. This book which is a based on Dr Dagbanja’s 2015 doctoral dissertation provides an original contribution to existing literature by focusing on the constitutionality of investment treaties. It deals with themes and issues which are critical for understanding Africa’s complex foreign investment protection and promotion laws. Although scholars have examined the linkages between constitutional law and international investment law notably using case studies from Europe and Latin America, this is the first monograph to focus on this issue from an African perspective.

I immensely enjoyed reading Dr. Mbori’s piece in Afronomicslaw titled ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Kenyan Supreme Court Shooting is own Foot on Merits Review and Appellate Jurisdiction in Continuing Supremacy Battle with the East Africa Court of Justice (EACJ). I now have the pleasure of partially disagreeing with him particularly on whether the EACJ has (merit) review jurisdiction over national laws. This comment is not an attempt at exhaustively analysing the Supreme Court Advisory Opinion in Reference No. E001 of 2022. I found that Advisory Opinion to be surface-level, a bit incoherent and internally inconsistent, and devoid of adequate reasoning. As such, I refrain from commenting on other key issues in the Advisory Opinion. Some of those issues are: how the Court determined that it has jurisdiction to issue the opinion; the relationship between international and municipal law; the Court’s repeated failure to distinguish sources of international law and their interaction with municipal law; the court’s (misplaced) discussion on subsidiarity and margin of appreciation, and the apportionment of interpretation and application functions between the EACJ and domestic courts. Rather, my comment is restricted to the question of whether the EACJ has (merit) review jurisdiction over national laws, which the Supreme Court answered in the negative and which Dr. Mbori answers in the affirmative. I partially disagree with both the Supreme Court and Dr. Mbori, but for different albeit related reasons.