Official: Deals unfair to Africa

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German ambassador to Tanzania Egon Kochanke exchanges views with the Registrar of the African Court, Dr Robert Eno, during the launch of Africa Institute of International Law in Arusha yesterday. Centre is East African Court of Justice President Dr Emmanuel Ugirashebuja.PHOTO| FILBERT RWEYEMAMU 

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Mr Karangizi said the imbalance resulted in the emergence of many commercial disputes which were resolved outside the continent and in so doing denied local African lawyers experience in arbitration cases.

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Arusha. Most of the contracts into which African countries enter are unfair to the continent, the African Legal Support Facility director, Mr Stephen Karangizi, observed here yesterday.

Mr Karangizi said during the inaugural ceremony of the African Institute of International Law (AIIL) that many clauses of the contracts were tilted towards the investors’ side.

At the ceremony held at the Arusha International Conference Centre were high level legal personalities including the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Judge Vagn Joensen.

Others were the president of the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, Judge Theodore Meron, the Registrar of the African Court on human and People’s rights, Dr Robert Eno, and Ms Virginia Morris, the secretary of the UN Advisory Committee on the programme of teaching, study, dissemination, and wider appreciation of international law.

Mr Karangizi said the imbalance resulted in the emergence of many commercial disputes which were resolved outside the continent and in so doing denied local African lawyers experience in arbitration cases.

“The Comesa (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) though is furnished with a clause for addressing arbitration cases, few states recourse to such regional courts,” he said.

Officiating at the ceremony, the deputy minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Dr Mahadhi Juma Maalim, said a deficit of capacity was undermining Africa’s ability to sustain and maintain relative growth and peace the continent was currently experiencing.

Judge Abdulquawi Yusuf, the founding president of the AIIL and president of of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Africa was excluded from the realm of the International Law, prompting the continent to create the institute.