Africa is widely recognized by the international economy as an important part of the global economy. Africa is vast and diverse, and doing business on the continent offers real opportunities that can come with challenges. We offer insight into a wide range of legal, regulatory and industry issues, leveraging our long-standing commitment and experience on the continent with our unparalleled coverage in Africa. The different legal systems, linguistic, cultural and religious backgrounds of many African countries, and the enormous impact that colonization has had on Africa, make investing in Africa more difficult, because one cannot have an approach that suits all countries. Africa has countries with civil, common law and mixed legal systems. As a result, a one-size-fits-all approach to Africa will never work. 2. Authoritarian regimes in Africa are increasingly using their country`s legal framework to suppress opposition rather than relying solely on violence and political repression. Laws that are supposed to regulate citizenship or protect public order are manipulated to restrict citizens` fundamental rights. As a result, Africa has seen an explosion of NGO, law and order and counter-terrorism laws used to harass and persecute democratic groups and human rights defenders. Ethiopia, for example, used its anti-terrorism proclamation in April 2014 to charge 10 bloggers and journalists with threatening public safety simply for writing about human rights. In Kenya, several human rights organizations recently had their licenses revoked for alleged links to terrorism – a decision that was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court.
Creating a reliable exit environment, both legally and economically, is critical to the success of private equity investments. Capital gains and dividend tax rates, as well as regular changes in tax and legal systems, continue to create an unaffordable environment and prevent many private equity firms from investing in African jurisdictions. Although private equity firms are interested in suitable exit alternatives, it is crucial for their investment decisions that they are adequately protected when entering the market, with the usual insurance, guarantees, indemnities and other contractual guarantees. Many private equity firms and their international legal advisors also opt for English law as the law applicable to such contractual arrangements. Therefore, an appropriate assessment of whether these safeguards are fully binding and locally enforceable is an essential part of the legal risk profile of any investment. Safeguards that appear strong, but prove to be unenforceable or illegal in the jurisdiction(s) concerned, would most likely have a negative impact on investment and expected returns. Climate change will remain a key issue for countries and businesses in 2019. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared southern Africa a “climate change hotspot”. More emphasis will be placed on fuel types for new projects under development in Africa. The financial impact and prospects of renewables (wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and solar) and thermal (gas, coal, diesel and heavy fuel oil) are influenced by technological improvements as well as regulatory and economic issues.
Addressing these issues (price, intermittency, base load, land rights and tax incentives) will be crucial for the financing of these projects. Development finance institutions will exert increasing pressure to finance more renewable energy projects, but economic factors will determine most fuel sources, such as fuel availability, grid stability and robustness, and overall project costs. All of this will increase the complexity and time required to complete these projects. In particular, there are potential wind and geothermal projects in Kenya and Ethiopia, while South Africa is likely to implement the next round of tenders for Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement (REIPPP) wind projects. Hannah Edmonds-Camara advises on a range of international and domestic labour and human rights issues, including the development and implementation of compliance policies and programs, international aspects of global employment and human rights transactions, and contentious employment issues. A 2001 comparative study by Sandra Joireman between the two Western legal systems in Africa found that British common law systems are more effective in ensuring their rule of law than European civil law practices. [43] Joireman explains that this difference is due to differences in economic status among African states, as GDP per capita is a strong indicator of a nation`s ability to form its judicial system and, therefore, to establish its legal institutions. Moreover, a better colonial experience under British rule and a better knowledge of indigenous politics were identified as plausible explanations for this difference. [44] An example of the latter comes from Niger, where the Ministry of Justice established a Coordination Committee on Terrorism and Cross-Border Organized Crime in 2018. The committee brings together investigators and judges working in the special forces, as well as chiefs of the armed forces, the National Guard, the gendarmerie and intelligence.
At the time of the committee`s creation, soldiers often participated in actions against violent extremism in Diffa and Liptako-Gourma, without being accompanied by the provost marshal gendarmerie or the military justice police. The Coordination Committee has made efforts to remedy the situation and strengthen procedures for security officials to respect human rights principles in the arrest, detention, investigation and transfer of terrorism suspects. These issues were prioritized as they affected the ability of prosecutors to bring viable prosecutions against suspects. Better coordination alone cannot address rule of law concerns about the government`s response to violent extremism, but the creation of the Committee was a promising step towards aligning security practices with fair trial standards. This, in turn, can help defuse the narrative of violent extremist organizations (OVCs) that governments do not respect the rule of law. Africa`s economic growth in 2019, accelerated by technological innovation across sectors, coincides with global trends towards digital and shared economies. The increasing focus on efficient and scalable asset utilization will lead to innovative, high-growth and impactful opportunities in Africa. The commitment of leading cloud computing companies to build data centers on the continent that provide wider access to advanced IT resources and services is critical to this transformation. Cloud computing resources will lead to more productive and knowledge-based economies, helping Africa`s young and rapidly growing population create innovative opportunities while addressing challenges in key sectors such as healthcare, transport, trade and education. How African policymakers work with the private sector to enact privacy, cybersecurity and related policies and regulations to protect individual and institutional data is one of the most important issues to watch. 1.
The grim state of press freedom Over the past decade, press freedom has seen the greatest decline of all other fundamental freedoms in Africa, according to Freedom in the World 2015. Authoritarian governments continue to use legal pressure, detention, and other forms of harassment to suppress independent reporting. According to the Committee to Project Journalists, 48 journalists were imprisoned in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2014 and 152 journalists were forced into exile between 2009 and 2014 – more than in any other region of the world. Even democracies in the region are taking steps to censor the media. Last year, for example, Botswana used a sedition bill to indict an editor and journalist for publishing an article critical of the president. As a result of these negative trends, only three percent of Africans live in countries where the media is free. Prior to the colonial period in the nineteenth century, the African legal system was dominated by traditional indigenous laws. [2] Efforts to maintain indigenous practices against emerging powers in continental Europe and Britain, although unsuccessful, led to the development of existing customary rights through the creation of “indigenous courts.” [3] While the colonies were governed by the imported legal system and the civil code of the metropolises, the practice of traditional laws continued under guardianship, their jurisdiction being reserved only for African citizens. [4] Modern African law exists as a conglomerate of legal practices and systems otherwise known as legal pluralism.
[6] This stems from its traditional ancestry, diverse colonial heritage, and post-independence period. On the positive side, courts in Kenya and Uganda have affirmed the right to housing and condemned evictions. Kenya`s Supreme Court ruled that the eviction of residents of City Carton, an informal settlement in the capital Nairobi, in 2013 violated their right to housing. Uganda`s Constitutional Court has found that the Wildlife Authority unlawfully evicted the Batwa indigenous people from their ancestral lands in the southwestern Mgahinga Forest.
