SADC

The News and Events category publishes the latest News and Events relating to International Economic Law relating to Africa and the Global South. Every week, Afronomicslaw.org receive the News and Events in their e-mail accounts. The News and Events published every week include conferences, major developments in the field of International Economic Law in Africa at the national, sub-regional and regional levels as well as relevant case law. News and Events with a Global South focus are also often included.

The African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation (APTF) was established in 2023 to improve Africa’s local pharmaceutical capacity and access to technologies needed to discover and manufacture medicines. This new initiative was prompted by the vaccine inequities experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, I highlight four critical concerns regarding the structural and operational framework of the APTF, which have the potential to undermine the Foundation's objectives and legitimacy: the misallocation of public resources due to the existence of a similar agency established by the African Union (AU), the Foundation's endorsement of BioNTech's opaque "black box" system, which conflicts with its objectives, the continental approach that overlooks the diversity of the African continent, and the lack of a clear public accountability structure in its governance framework. Consequently, I offer preliminary suggestions on how these concerns might be addressed.

The Pretoria University Law Press (PULP) in partnership with African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) and Afronomicslaw invites you to the virtual book launch of COVID-19 and Sovereign Debt, edited by Daniel D. Bradlow and Magalie L. Masamba (2022).

IDLU is pleased to invite academics, researchers, industry experts, policymakers, and officials in civil society organizations and international organizations to submit abstracts for papers to be presented at the conference and included in an e-book on sovereign debt in Africa.

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.

Fox and Bakhoum contextualize competition law by describing (in chapters 2 and 3) the structure and other key characteristic of markets in numerous African countries, including the economic and political history of those countries and their markets, as well as the legacies of colonization and decolonization – and by highlighting more broadly the economic challenges and needs of the people of Africa.

This book symposium is about a new era of international investment norms in Africa. The discussion focuses on how to foster cooperation between African states and foreign investors in implementing sustainable development objectives and addressing global challenges. Several traditional investment treaties offer investors broad rights and protections that are backed by strong dispute settlement mechanisms. In the same vein, States have historically committed to non-reciprocal obligations in investment treaties that are seen as significantly limiting the policy space of states.

A proper assessment of Rudahindwa’s monograph on the subject of establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) is one that cannot exclude the currents of ongoing reform efforts and the extent to which they are able to move the continent faster towards the dream of achieving the AEC. This invariably raises some methodological questions that border on multidisciplinary approach to regionalism, and the issue of context. The author highlights these two imperatives in the monograph. By using the concept of “developmental regionalism” as an analytical prism, the author situates the discussion within a multidisciplinary paradigm.

Post-Cotonou approaches to innovation require the technocrats to go beyond the jargon of ‘partnership of equals’ and change their own modus operandi: the future relationship must be based on co-production and the case of GIs is a testing ground for this. This would involve dedicating technical teams to work co-productively with farmers’ groups – women, youth, community-based – to understand the local issues that will impact any GI scheme in the regions. But it also means looking at new and novel products, such as cannabis, especially given the drive to legalise cannabis and in particular ‘medical marijuana. By extension, it means recognizing the importance of a development focused approach to the ACP and extending the scope of GIs beyond its current remit which has long-been defined by European values.