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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
The Republic of Senegal has embarked upon a project to reform its private law. This fact, of itself, might not seem worthy of the attention of the legal profession in the United States, since Senegal is a country of only about 3,250,000 inhabitants, less than the population of the state of Alabama, covering only 76,000 square miles, less than the area of the state of Kansas, and having a total of exports and imports to the dollar zone of less than twelve million dollars in 1962. With twenty per cent of its population in its six largest cities of more than 30,000 inhabitants, it is the most urban, most literate, and most Europeanized of the francophonic countries of sub-Saharan Africa, but this alone would evoke little interest abroad in its attempts at law reform.
1 This article resulted from an exchange financed by the Ford Foundation which took the author to the Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Economiques of the Université de Dakar during the months of December, 1963 and January, 1964. It reports the state of law reform as of January 31 st, 1964. Another version is also being published in French in Annales Africaines. I wish to thank the many persons from the bench, bar, and government who helped in its preparation and in particular M. Roger Decottignies, Dean of the Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Economiques. Because it is based in large measure upon mimeographed reports and minutes of the drafting committee and upon conversations with those who took part in the revision, no attempt has been made to provide citations. The First Part of the Code of Obligations is available in the Journal Officiel of Senegal for August 31st, 1963. The Second Part has, at the time of this writing, not been placed before the National Assembly so that comment on its precise terms would be considered improper. The best discussion of the general problems with which this article is concerned is in Annales Africaines for 1962, which contains the proceedings of the Colloquium of Law Faculties of May 1962 on Economic Development and Juridical Evolution (Colloque des Facultés de Droit de Mai 1962—Développement Economique et Evolution Juridique). The Ethiopian civil code is discussed in English in David, “A Civil Code for Ethiopia: considerations on the codification of the civil law in African countries”, (1963), 37 Tul. L.R. 187.