Foreign Direct Investment

This symposium presents two interesting memoirs of African students who have participated in these moots and have chosen paths of graduate studies that are related to international economic law and development studies. Mr Mishael Wambua a student at Strathmore University Law and last year winner and best oralist at the John H. Jackson writes about his experience and advice to future mooters. Ms Purity Maritim a former participant of the same moot and now a masters student at the Graduate Institute in Geneva also writes about her experiences and what she learnt from the moot. The other two contributions are from Mr Christian Campbell the Assistant Director FDI moot and Tsotang Tsietsi lecturer and moot coach from the National University of Lesotho. These two contributions present two interesting perspectives on the many directions that moot court competitions can take for Africa in the near future.

The Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal (PER/PELJ) invites contributions from authors with regard to the impact of the COVID-19 on the future regulation of foreign investment in developing states.

Under the imperialism approach transplanted commercial laws especially from countries receiving these laws from their colonial or other western metropolitan centers are viewed as aimed at securing the immediate and future commercial interests of the colonial/metropolitan empire and not the interests of the peoples of the receiving countries.

In short, the SDGs and its interesting set of targets are a fertile ground not only to reimagine past UN led decade themed goals and their implications for (sustainable) development, but, to also situate them in contemporary discourse of the activities of nations, transnational corporations and other non-state actors. As part of the 2019 Purdy Crawford Workshop, the contributions to the symposium on “Sustainable Development Goals, Trade, Investment, and Inequality” critically examine these goals from the vantage point of each contributor’s scholarly expertise.

The combination of the Model Law backbone (both for extant and putative law) and the change in direction of judicial policy in favour of enforcement of arbitration agreements and arbitral awards makes Nigeria well suited for the receipt of FDI in Renewal Energy Projects.

Although recognised in the constitution since 1988, town planning has remained dogged by institutional and organisational failures, which in combination with a lack of commitment at federal and state levels to the funding of coherent and integrated development planning policy has, of necessity, led to greater reliance upon external resources (Ramon, 2017). Hence funding infrastructure development, in the given context presents difficulty as in many jurisdictions, whether developed or developing, given the multiple claims for funding that governments find they have to resource. 

This blog post examined how legal and institutional barriers have affected FDI in Nigeria’s RE sector and proffered strategies to resolve the identified issues. It was established that though Nigeria has considerable potential for generating solar, small and large hydro, biomass, biogas and wind energy to bridge her huge energy gap, the current RE production from these sources is abysmally low. Meanwhile, the FDI inflow in the sector is declining despite the government’s renewed favourable disposition. The situation is further exacerbated by some legal and institutional impediments that include policy inconsistency, inadequate legal framework, corruption, ineffective administrative processes, poor adherence to the rule of law, lack of awareness and insecurity.

The involvement of the private sector in this effort ‘cannot be overemphasised’. Such engagement however, requires appropriate legal and institutional infrastructure. It must be monitored; it must be properly designed, and above all, it must be inclusive to ensure sustainability. The authors of the following posts will highlight some of the elements that are necessary for achieving this delicate balance.

Based the observation from Ghana and Kenya, there is the need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of investment tax incentives to ensure transparency, accountability, reduce associated costs, and check abuse.

The huge investments in the extractive sector should, in principle, be a catalyst for economic growth, job opportunities, and development. Often, these investments have been a source of environmental degradation, socio-economic malaise and despair. Equatorial Guinea, for instance, is a classic example of the ‘resource curse mystery in Africa. To leverage extractive resources for development, African countries are faced with legal, fiscal, implementation, infrastructure, regulatory and institutional challenges. This contribution addresses state and investor responsibility in the sustainable development of Africa’s extractive sector. It highlights four responsibility indices that will guide states and investors in fostering a shared value approach to an inclusive and sustainable development of Africa’s extractive sector.