The Past, Present and Future of International Investment Law in Africa

This chapter examines how African approaches to international investment law have evolved over the last six decades in tandem to ‘world’ political and economic events. These include decolonisation and the quest for self-determination after World War II; UN-based resolutions for permanent sovereignty over natural resources and a new international economic order in the 1960s and 1970s; the 1973 world oil crisis; the end of the Cold War in the 1990s; the 2008 global financial crisis and a multipolar post-9/11 world. This chapter argues that these events have led to an accidental trajectory that has contributed to deeply-fragmented ideas on the form, structure, purpose and use of international law in Africa. Although African contributions to international investment law have been largely overlooked, this chapter repositions the importance of the continent.

The chapter is divided into three main parts: the past, the present and the future. These parts chronologically examine key developments in a historical, economic and political context. This analysis reveals that even though it is difficult to identify a uniform intellectual movement on an African international investment law, the central concern for all scholars remains economic growth and development of the continent. Using a law and sociology approach, the chapter identifies the main strands of scholarship that have emerged over the last six decades. The chapter also examines the challenges of international investment law in Africa by amplifying the perspectives of a younger generation of international law scholars. Overall, the chapter argues that the future of international investment law in Africa rests on collaboration, dialogue, capacity, realism and impact-driven research. The chapter illustrates that the main hindrances to the future of international investment law are good governance and an overhaul of the current political class.