This article contrasts the lawmaking process in the Eritrean transitional legal framework with experience in South Africa, which offers insightful lessons for future improvement in Eritrea. Indeed, the Eritrean lawmaking process retains many imperfections in terms of the design of the interim constitution and ensuing practice. On paper, the competence of the executive and the legislature is not clearly demarcated. Rather, it is nebulously shared between both branches, resulting inevitably in competing interests. The lawmaking process lacks democratic characteristics and defies the requirements of accountability and good governance. The practice that has followed is worse. In a country with a protracted history of executive dominance, the lawmaking competence conferred upon the executive has inexorably contributed to entrenched dictatorship. The article offers suggestions for improvement.

Disinformation has become a formidable challenge to the integrity of electoral processes as well as the internal political stability of many countries. This state of affairs has spurred a wave of new regulatory measures in several countries. From stringent rules governing dissemination of political advertisements via social media platforms to media literacy programmes, the past few years saw the introduction of legislative and non-legislative measures in many jurisdictions. Ethiopia is no exception in introducing measures to address the problem. This article examines Ethiopia's policy responses towards addressing the impact of disinformation on the integrity and credibility of elections. It argues that measures taken thus far in Ethiopia appear to address the impact of disinformation on national security and social harmony. As such, Ethiopia has not taken tailored measures to address the impact of disinformation on its democratic aspirations, particularly in holding free, fair and democratic elections.

Professor Antony Allott's first studies of law in Africa were of Ghanaian land law. From an early date he has discussed issues of land title registration in Africa. It is therefore fitting in this celebratory number to note that Ghana, after many years of debate and delays, recently enacted a statute providing for the registration of interests in land throughout the country. It is planned that the Land Title Registration Law, 1986 (P.N.D.C.L. 152) (hereafter “the Law”) will be brought into operation in stages as areas are successively designated “registration districts”. It is expected to begin with Accra “and designated agricultural areas”, according to the Memorandum to the Law. When an area is so designated, the Chief Registrar of Lands will be obliged forthwith to call upon all persons claiming interests in land therein to present their claims. Those proven, after adjudication if necessary, will be registered, and the register will be conclusive. All subsequent changes in the holding of interests are to be effectuated through changes in the register. The Land Title Registration Regulations, 1986 (L.I. 1341) have already been made to provide in more detail for the procedures to be followed.

This contribution attempts to provide a brief, critical summary of the central features of the Law. It considers these in the context of the historical development of Ghanaian land law, and contrasts them with features of certain other schemes which have been implemented or proposed.

The material which forms the subject matter of this article constituted a chapter of a PhD thesis presented to London University in 1980. The thesis was based largely on the answers to Kohler's questionnaire which was distributed by the German colonial authorities throughout what was then German East Africa in 1909. A recent article in the Journal of African Law describes these questionnaires in detail. Bibliographical references in the following text to the answers to the questionnaires follow the numbers assigned to them by Ankermann (1929) and used in the list in Redmayne and Rogers' article. Some answers were published at the time and these are referred to in the same way as normal bibliographical entries Some use has also been made of Post's earlier questionnaire which, together with the answers, was published under the editorship of Steinmetz (1903). Post's questionnaire was written in 1895 and distributed throughout the German colonies. The thesis dealt with land tenure and contract and so covered the field of the answers in the questionnaires dealing with those topics. It also set out a typology of African societies at the time the questionnaires were distributed, based on what could be discovered of their economic and social relations. As it turned out this typology proved rather more useful in establishing connections between economic relations and forms of land tenure than it was in establishing connections with such relations and contractual liability.

Marriage as a social institution has been deliberately protectedas a matter of State policy. Such protection manifests itself in a variety of ways, one of which is the subject of this article. In an attempt to protect the sanctity of marriage, a rule evolved under which spouses cannot give evidence against each other in legal proceedings. In the words of that venerable English jurist, Coke, if this were not so “it might be a cause of implacable discord and dissension between the husband and the wife”. The rule shows itself in strange ways both in criminal and civil cases. For example, the law regards spouses as one person and as such they cannot conspire with each other. Although the institution has been on a slippery slope for a long time with the increasing prevalence of “cohabitation” it has shown remarkable resilience and most of the population still partake and support it. The British bequeathed the rules relating to competence of spouses to Botswana some decades ago and these have since been applied in their pristine purity although the legislature left an escape route by which they could be supplemented. It is this route for supplementation which has led to issues that need to be resolved. Some of these are explored in this article, after a brief historical background of the reception of the rules.

In Zimbabwe, the initials “POSB” are well known as the acronym for the Post Office Savings Bank. These initials also came to symbolize a major step towards the development of a more acceptable security law with the publication of the Public Order and Security Bill (POSB). According to the Memorandum accompanying the draft legislation, it would

Problems of entrepreneurship and petty trade have largely been ignored in planning to reform land tenure and land use in Botswana. Yet the administrative agencies regulating land use are also involved in the licensing of trade, and the need to reform the trading regulations and traditions inherited from the colonial state are no less pressing than the need for land reform. There is a pattern which is gradually coming to be recognised in other parts of Africa as well. The inherited trading regulations, often phrased or explained as intended to protect consumers, constitute a formidable barrier to the development of new forms of competition in trade. If applied strictly, and effectively, they would block the expansion of petty entrepreneurship and the entry into trade of a new category of entrepreneurs. In effect, the regulations favour the continued dominance in trade of the larger-scale traders, often aliens, who were established in their businesses before independence. Moreover, the continued dominance of the old trading establishment is somewhat masked by the apparently large increase in the number of officially registered traders. Such numbers conceal the fact that the inherited rules generate constraints which make it harder for new traders to penetrate into the highly profitable trade sectors hitherto monopolised, with few exceptions, by aliens or non-Africans. Thus in Botswana, the continued dominance of trade and commerce by Europeans and Asians since Independence has been bolstered by a series of archaic and complex licensing regulations which, in effect, eliminate any advantages petty entrepreneurs might have in competing with large-scale, established enterprises.

On 29 May, 1996, the Governments of Botswana and Namibia jointly notified the Registrar of the International Court of Justice of a Special Agreement that was signed between them on 15 February, 1996, and which came into force on 15 May, 1996, for the submission to the Court of the dispute existing between them concerning Kasikili/Sedudu Island.

Uganda's Independence Constitution, which came into force on October 9th, 1962, was the culmination of long negotiation in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting interests of Buganda, the western kingdoms and Busoga on the one hand, and the rest of the country on the other, and the result was a delicate compromise between a unitary and a federal state—the fruit of a political understanding between the Uganda Peoples Congress and the Buganda traditionalists. As in the following years rifts first appeared and then steadily widened in the alliance between the Uganda Peoples Congress and the Kabaka Yekka—between radical and traditionalist— the survival of the Constitution in its original form appeared more and more doubtful. In fact, however, the Constitution survived for over three years with only three amending Acts, the first and most important of these making provision for the substitution of a President for a Governor-General in October, 1963.

This article examines the requirement of the Nigerian Investment and Securities Act, 1999 (ISA) that securities be registered prior to being offered to the public, with a view to determining the limits (boundaries) of that requirement. It shows that the boundaries can be staked out along three dimensions: items excluded from the registration requirement because they are not caught by the definition of securities under the ISA; items that qualify as securities under the ISA's definition of that term but which are exempt from registration for various policy reasons (exempt securities); and items which are exempt only because of the nature of the transactions involved rather than the nature of the securities themselves (exempt transactions). It shows that while doubts about the limits of the registration requirement exist at some points where the boundaries cannot be readily staked out without interpretive difficulties, such doubts and the points in relation to which they exist are relatively residual, except in areas where the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission has in its rule-making manifested a misconception of its powers under the ISA.

At the end of apartheid, the South African government adopted laws regulating civil society that are widely seen as “good” laws: laws designed to encourage and facilitate a thriving civil society sector. In 2019 the Ethiopian government repealed the repressive, decade-old Charities and Societies Proclamation and replaced it with a much more open and permissive regulatory system, also aimed at facilitating a thriving civil society sector. This article compares South Africa's post-apartheid civil society organization (CSO) laws with Ethiopia's 2019 law, to examine the different and overlapping ways in which these regimes attempt to advance the interests of CSOs against an historical background of state oppression. In doing so, it examines what “good” regulation of CSOs constitutes in practice and finds that there are significant limits to the effectiveness of regulatory change in addressing the many, complex problems CSOs face, especially in the wake of political and legal oppression.

The legal protection of geographical indications (GIs) has become an important concern in both developed and developing countries. In Ethiopia, despite the existence of the need and enormous potential for the protection of GIs, the issue of GIs has not been given due attention. The legal protection of GIs in Ethiopia has not been expressly regulated by any specific legislation. It may arguably be protected under a collective trademark system. However, this system only operates for distinctive GIs. Consequently, most descriptive GIs are not embraced by the system unless the distinctiveness requirement is dispensed with for the registration of GIs as collective trademarks. Moreover, the existing system needs to be redefined in light of the notion of GIs under the TRIPs Agreement. It is therefore high time that an appropriate legal framework be designed to ensure the effective protection and enforcement of GIs in Ethiopia.

This article examines the interplay between traditional leaders, democratically elected leaders and succession in Makapanstad Village, North West Province, South Africa. The article stems from community-based participatory action research conducted in Makapanstad in 2018. The article uses research data, in the form of community dialogue, together with desktop literature on the same subject. The article analyses the significance and role of traditional leadership in a democratic South Africa. It considers traditional leadership and democratically elected leadership in conjunction with succession and the demarcation of roles and responsibilities. The article analyses participants’ views to explore the form of leadership preferred by the residents of Makapanstad. It argues that, despite the recognition of traditional leadership in South Africa's Constitution, the roles and responsibilities of traditional leaders in local and provincial arms of government are limited, in contrast to those of democratically elected leaders.

Between 1999 and 2007, a popular Labour-led movement led a pro-poor struggle to resist the fuel price hike policy of the Nigerian government. Waged in the context of the poverty in which nearly 70 per cent of Nigerians lived, the operation of powerful incentives to raise fuel prices, and Labour's extraordinary socio-political leverage, these struggles triggered much government frustration. One of the strategies adopted by the government to legitimize its attempt to repress the movement was to resort to the courts. This article analyses, from a socio-legal perspective, the key cases relating to the validity of the government's attempts to repress the struggles. The article concludes that, although both pro- and anti-movement trends can be observed in the jurisprudence, the anti-movement tendency having so far prevailed in terms of formal legal precedent, the pro-movement (ie pro-poor) decisions have, as a result of their massive popular legitimacy, actually functioned as the “living law.”