Stand-Alone Posts

Guinea occupies a structurally significant position in the global minerals economy as the world’s largest holder of bauxite reserves and second leading producer of the ore, which is indispensable for aluminium production and increasingly recognised as strategically important to global industrial supply chains. This update examines Guinea’s intensifying resource nationalism in the global bauxite sector, focusing on the revocation of mining licences, the resulting high-value international arbitration claims, and the government’s planned legal defence. It situates these developments within broader African debates on bauxite’s strategic importance, mineral governance, and efforts to reclaim sovereign control and value from critical raw materials.

An International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) tribunal dismissed Sundance’s arbitration claim against the Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville), the Australian-headquartered mining company confirmed in a statement released on 27 January 2026. According to the statement, the tribunal, which operated under the ICC Arbitration Rules 2021, issued its final decision following a hearing held in Paris in November 2024 and subsequent post-hearing submissions. The tribunal determined that “Congo had a legitimate basis for revocation of Sundance subsidiary Congo Iron’s exploitation permit due to non-development of the project in the period 2016-2018 and, consequently, all claims by Sundance and Congo Iron have been dismissed.”

In November 2025, Barrick Mining Corporation (“Barrick”) and the Government of the Republic of Mali (“Mali”) reached a comprehensive settlement resolving disputes arising from the Loulo and Gounkoto gold mining operations. The agreement concluded nearly two years of escalating conflict marked by regulatory changes, operational disruptions, employee detentions, asset seizures, and the initiation of international arbitration proceedings. Under the settlement, Barrick agreed to pay approximately USD 430 million, equivalent to around 244 billion CFA francs, in exchange for the withdrawal of all arbitration claims and the restoration of its operational position in Mali.

On the 1st of January 2026, reports pointed that Zambia had become the first African country to accept China’s yuan for mining tax payments. The Bank of Zambia confirmed that payments in renminbi began in October 2025. Zambia’s move represents a significant departure from the long-standing dominance of the US dollar in African public finance and resource taxation. This positions the country at the forefront of an emerging trend in which African states are experimenting with alternative settlement currencies to manage external vulnerabilities and deepen strategic economic partnerships. Drawing largely on recent analysis of currency diversification in African fiscal policies, this update argues that Zambia’s yuan policy reflects both pragmatic responses to liquidity constraints and deeper structural shifts in the global financial order, while raising important questions about transparency, dependency and long-term fiscal autonomy. This update examines Zambia’s decision to accept mining tax payments in the Chinese yuan, situating the policy within broader debates on currency diversification, fiscal sovereignty and the evolving political economy of Africa’s extractive sectors.

In November 2025, the Government of Libya launched legal action to recover more than US$100 million in unpaid debt from Zimbabwe, adding to the nation’s growing list of creditor disputes as it struggles under a debt burden exceeding US$23 billion. As of September 2025, Zimbabwe's total public and publicly guaranteed debt stock stood at US$23.4 billion, which includes US$13.6 billion in external debt. This update examines Zimbabwe’s renewed sovereign debt challenges through the lens of the ongoing legal dispute with Libya over a US$100 million fuel-related debt originating from a 2001 credit facility, situating the case within Zimbabwe’s broader, long-standing debt crisis and governance weaknesses in public borrowing. The update further explores how the decision by the Libyan Foreign Bank to pursue litigation in the UK High Court reflects wider trends in cross-border sovereign debt enforcement and signals increasing impatience among creditors with unresolved legacy obligations. By connecting the Libyan claim to Zimbabwe’s wider external debt overhang, exclusion from international capital markets, and stalled arrears clearance efforts, the analysis highlights how long-standing sovereign debts continue to constrain fiscal sovereignty, undermine economic recovery, and expose structural weaknesses in debt management.

The report critically reviews the failure of major debt restructuring initiatives between 2015 and 2025 to demonstrate the severity and persistence of the debt crisis and to situate Seville as a missed opportunity for reform. It then analyses what the Outcome Document does and does not achieve on sovereign debt and financial architecture, concluding with recommendations for post-Seville reform. Drawing on dependency theory and a political economy framework, the paper shows how existing power asymmetries, institutional incentives, and global financial structures continue to constrain effective debt solutions for the Global South.

Organised in partnership with the Fondation Afric’Avenir, this edition seeks to rethink the divide between the formal and informal economy through a decolonial comparative legal approach. It also aims to contribute to the consolidation of a decolonial comparative law community across the African continent and beyond. The overarching theme of the 2027 edition is decolonial comparative law and the informal/formal economy. The workshop takes the informal economy seriously as a site of legality in its own right, examined through a decolonial and comparative lens attentive to legal pluralism and situated practices.

Using the dependency theory and a political economy framework to analyze the FfD4 Outcome Document, this paper provides a brief critical review of the ineffectiveness of debt restructuring initiatives over the past decade (2015–2025). The paper shows how dire the debt crisis has been and continues to be, and how Seville was a missed opportunity to change course. Importantly, it critically analyzes what Seville managed “to do and did not do” on debt and international financial architecture provisions in the Outcome Document and concludes by providing recommendations to strengthen them in a post-Seville.

On 24 October 2025, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) removed South Africa from its grey list of “Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring,” marking the end of 32 months of enhanced scrutiny. This delisting marks a significant milestone in South Africa's efforts to strengthen its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CFT) framework. Still, it also signals the start of a new phase that will require sustained commitment to financial integrity.

We invite interventions from scholars of international law, international relations, and germane fields exploring the future of international economic law.