The problem of diversity of laws remains a major, if indirect, obstacle to African economic development which has not been the subject of any concerted consideration or attention by African states. It is now generally recognized that diversity of laws is an impediment to international commercial activity. Diversity of laws also negatively affects commercial transactions between African merchants and foreign (non-African) contractors. Furthermore, diversity of international commercial laws among African countries is likely to impede the achievement of the objectives of the economic integration schemes.

The activities of oil multinational corporations (MNCs) in Nigeria, especially in the oil and gas sector, have come under focus in recent years. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in the USA highlighted the negative or unintended consequences of the activities of MNCs. Also, oil MNCs in Nigeria have been at the centre of scandals about poor labour standards, environmental degradation and human rights violations amongst others. Furthermore, the extant state-oriented or command and control regulatory regime has been ineffective. Thus, self-regulation by oil MNCs has risen to help counter these negative consequences. This article contends that the self-regulatory regime is ineffective and advocates for reforms to remedy it.

The history of illegal farming activities in certain forest reserves in the Western Region of Ghana demonstrates the magnitude of the problems facing conservationists, administrators and forestry personnel i n developing countries. The objective of this article is to explore briefly some of those problems and to reflect on the value of a human rights approach to environmental protection in the light of events in Western Ghana. First, the article presents evidence of the scale of illegal farming i n some forest reserves in the Western Region, before discussing the various initiatives taken since the 1960s to reserve and protect forest land in this Region. The administrative, legal and political obstacles to their success are highlighted as is the role played by competing interest groups. The implications of this analysis for the concept of environmental rights is then briefly discussed and alternative proposals for tackling this problem suggested.

This article demonstrates that there has never been a clear definition of public land in Liberian legal history, although in the past the government operated as if all land that was not under private deed was public. By examining primary source materials found in archives in Liberia and the USA, the article traces the origins of public land in Liberia and its ambiguous development as a legal concept. It also discusses the ancillary issues of public land sale procedures and statutory prices. The conclusions reached have significant implications for the reform of Liberia's land sector.

Since the restoration of civilian rule in Nigeria in 1999, the governments of various Northern states have initiated reforms designed to remodel their legal systems in conformity with the Sharia. An issue which has generated intense controversy, especially in legal and political circles, is whether these reforms are consistent with certain key provisions of the 1999 Constitution. This study begins by tracing the historical process through which the application of the Sharia has emerged as a matter of profound constitutional importance in Nigeria. This is followed by a detailed analysis of specific provisions of the 1999 Constitution which are considered to have a direct bearing on the constitutionality of the Sharia reforms. Particular attention is paid to those provisions which proclaim the supremacy of the Constitution, prohibit the adoption of a state religion and prescribe the jurisdiction of various courts. Consideration is also given to the effect of various fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution on the Sharia penal regimes introduced as part of the reforms. The study demonstrates that various facets of the reforms are difficult to reconcile with the 1999 Constitution and concludes that fundamental constitutional reforms will be required to redress this state of affairs.

Expressions Indicating varying degrees of dissatisfaction with systems of land tenure prevailing in sub-Saharan Africa are very common, and the view is widely held that the traditional institutions which govern land rights operate in a manner obstructive to agricultural development. “If enterprise is to be given an opportunity to express itself”, writes Dr. Yudelman in a recent book, “there must be a break with traditional institutions which govern land”.Views of this kind call for decisions regarding the substitution of one system of law for another, or for various kinds of radical reform including the engrafting onto the traditional system of legal expedients and devices proved useful in other systems of law. Such decisions, however, patently require much more than a mere nodding acquaintance with the existing local law, the changes sought to be introduced therein, and their functioning in the systems of law from which they are to be borrowed. Accordingly a need exists for a kind of comparative legal analysis of existing systems of landholding which can throw into relief the real points of weakness that need to be remedied or pruned away, while also indicating the elements that are worthy to be retained, if even only as the stock upon which novel arrangements may be engrafted.

This essay is an attempt to investigate, assess and compare the role of the “people” as makers of law in a variety of customary societies in black Africa on the one hand, and in England on the other. The studies that may have been made of this sort of question by lawyers, constitutional experts, sociologists, political scientists and the like have rarely, if ever, contrasted the law-making function of the people in the two types of society. Where such a contrast has been made, it has tended to be limited to the proposition that things are quite different in the two types of society. It will be one of the arguments of this essay that, although the procedures and mechanisms of the law may fundamentally differ if one compares a highly developed, industrialised, literate society such as England with a simpler subsistence pre-literate society such as anciently those of the Ashanti and the Sotho, yet in each society, whatever the forms in which power is exercised or however absolute the authority possessed by those in power, yet the people participate constantly and in a variety of ways in a continuing process of law-making. It will be the task of this paper to isolate, describe and compare those ways.

Since the promulgation of Uganda's new constitution in 1995, the Law Reform Comission (LRC) has had the task of revising statutory laws to conform to the new constitution. One focal point has been the drafting of a Domestic Relations Bill. The bill proposes significant changes in women's legal status within the institutions of marriage and succession. Under the new statute, for example, women would gain joint marital property rights over any assets acquired during the course of marriage. Women could use the law to challenge husbands who seek to sell property or shift assets among their wives. The bill also proposes that when a married person dies intestate, the suviving spouse(s) should be appointed administrator to the estate, unless the courts have good reason not to do so. This should facilitate widows who seek to protect their assets from relatives who perceive in death opportunities to grab property. Not suprisingly, publication of the bill generated considerable outrage among men who perceive the extension of property rights to women as a direct threat to a natural social order privileging male authority.

This article analyses the challenges facing those living in poverty in Nigeria in accessing justice for the enforcement of their rights, despite those rights being constitutionally protected and despite the existence of a specific procedure for their enforcement. People living in poverty are generally most likely to see their human rights violated, and least likely to enforce their rights. The article posits that the judiciary in developing countries has a crucial role to play in fighting human rights violations specifically affecting people living in poverty, and notes the great challenge for the Nigerian legislator and judiciary towards making justice accessible in practical terms to the needy in Nigeria. The example of public interest litigation in India can serve as a source of inspiration in this respect.

The South African telecommunications sector has recently been the subject of renewed interest as it commences its second phase of liberalization and opens up its fixed line market to competition. With democracy in place since 1994, the challenge of economic and social development created by the ravages of apartheid required detailed government policy in every sector. Telecommunications was no exception. Since the promulgation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, developmental objectives, particularly universal service, the advancement of small and medium enterprises (SMMEs) and the economic empowerment of historically disadvantaged individuals have rivalled more pedestrian sectoral reform goals often given priority in other countries, such as the promotion of innovation and competition.

Federalism is increasingly promoted and utilized in multi-ethnic countries as a means to guarantee minority rights and safeguard the harmony and integrity of the polity and state. Yet, due to the unfeasibility of achieving a perfect overlap between ethnic and territorial boundaries, every ethnic-based territory will contain ethnic minority groups. This is also the case in the Ethiopian Federation where all nine regions are ethnically heterogeneous, albeit to different degrees. This article investigates how Ethiopia's regions are approaching their minority groups by analysing the relevant regional constitutions and laws. The analysis shows that the main minority protection mechanism is the establishment of ethnic-based local governments. Although this device is not without merit as far as minority protection is concerned, the impracticality of achieving ethnically homogeneous territories is its major limitation. The article therefore concludes by recommending a number of complementary legal instruments striving for more comprehensive minority protection.

Although, as the name of the country suggests, Botswana is populated mainly by Tswana-speaking peoples, it is acknowledged that the most indigenous or aboriginal inhabitants of the country are the San or Basarwa, identified and described in some of the literature as Bushmen. Basarwa also have the less admirable distinction of being perceived and depicted as the most marginalized of all the ethnic groups in the country. Concern about the status, and the political and economic position of Basarwa in Botswana has been expressed in numerous reports and writings, official and unofficial, and at various conferences, seminars and gatherings, national or international.

There is a familiar stereotype overrunning much of the anthropological literature on political and economic development in new nations. Brokers and big men have captured the stage, and their chains and alliances, their manipulations and calculations, their political games as men in the middle of centre-periphery relations have loomed larger than life in the literature. Indeed, it has come to be almost a matter of faith in certain studies of new African nations, especially studies influenced by work on India, to regard political questions within the frame of a patronage model, since it has been taken for granted that transactions between patrons and clients or “friends of friends” control the stuff of politics, the decisions about who gets what, when and how. How and why the rule of law is upheld during those periods of major change in government that come immediately before and after Independence remains a largely neglected question. Yet in a new nation citizens may also take political action through appeals to ministers, courts, tribunals, or commissions of enquiry and thus subject decisions by the local government to review and sometimes revision by the central government. The outcome need not be a foregone conclusion, because the hearings may pit the interests of the central and the local government against each other. The central government may then have to defend the aggrieved citizen against the local elected officials or civil servants. The point is not that a citizenship model has to be put in the place of the old patronage model. Rather the power of citizens in a new nation qua citizens has to be taken as problematic, and their powerlessness without middlemen or brokers cannot be assumed, especially in centre-periphery relations.

This article examines the culture of gift-giving against the background of anti-bribery laws, which preclude gift-giving in certain contexts, and the Code of Conduct for Public Officers which allows gift-giving in other contexts. It identifies what is wrong with bribery and uses this to distinguish between bribery and socio-cultural gift-giving practices in Nigeria. The author argues that the boundary between acceptable gift-giving and bribery is crossed whenever a gift induces or is intended to induce the recipient to perform a relevant function in breach of the expectation to act impartially, in good faith or in a manner that amounts to a betrayal of trust. The article finds that the Code of Conduct for Public Officers, which allows public officers to receive gifts from relatives and personal friends on occasions recognized by custom, dilutes the constitutional objective to eradicate corruption and recommends their removal.

There is no single definition of customary law agreed by lawyers, jurists, social anthropologists and others who may be concerned with it. This in itself is not surprising for both “custom” and “law” may be used in a number of differing senses depending upon the requirements of a writer's approach. The fact that these terms may mean different things to different persons in different contexts is not in itself important. But the place of customary law in the developing legal systems of new African states is a matter of some considerable contemporary importance which calls for some precise definition in this immediate respect. In general terms it may perhaps be said that here a lawyer looks for rules of law such as are familiar to him in other legal systems, whilst the anthropologist is more concerned with the interaction between law and the social and political system of a people, and in any case recognizes that legal relationships are but a part of the total relationships between individuals in a society. Some of the divergences of view on the concept and definition of customary law may be lessened however if it is recognized that a diachronic approach may clarify part of the disputed field.

Compulsory acquisition of land by the state for public purposes is an entrenched feature of national constitutions. Yet the scope of private property is rarely defined. This is problematic in agrarian economies where millions own land under non-statutory arrangements that were historically excluded from recognition as property. This study examines the case in Africa where more than 650 million people are untitled customary landowners. Despite vibrant constitutional change, protection of these rights remains disappointing, while the grounds for taking land have expanded. However, this article concludes that reining in the scope of public purpose is not the most useful way forward. It would be more productive to persist in bringing constitutional force to bear on the standing of customary rights, along with democratizing procedures towards full community participation in deciding how public purpose acquisitions should proceed. The result would be greater tenure security, good governance and more peaceful relations between the state and people regarding land.

The article calls for the alteration of the present risk-benefit calculus of would-be coup plotters that may wish to subvert Nigeria's democracy, by arguing for the introduction of an ex ante risk of ex post prosecution for successful usurpations. The prosecution of those that subverted Nigeria's democracy on 31 December, 1983, will alter the present risk-benefit calculus, which is skewed in favour of coup plotting. Since such a prosecution will not succeed if the constitution imposed on Nigeria by its last military rulers continues to be accepted as valid, the article furnishes the legal basis for its judicial annulment and the consequent unearthing of the Constitution of 1979. By demonstrating that the Constitution of 1999 is a sham, it becomes evident that the judiciary has a duty under the Constitution of 1979 to pronounce this document as null and void.

As the land adjudication and consolidation programme made progress in the Kikuyu Land Unit in the middle of the nineteen-fifties, it became clear that the traditional system of land tenure would have to be replaced by a system based on the registration of individual titles. Customary law was seen as an obstacle to agricultural development. Customary rules of inheritance could destroy the benefits of land consolidation. Moreover, the individual farmer had little incentive to develop his holding under customary arrangements. This point of view was illustrated by the Swynnerton Plan which proposed that “the African farmer … be provided with such security of tenure through an indefeasible title as will encourage him to invest his labour and profits into the development of his farm and as will enable him to offer it as security against financial credits”. Swynnerton hoped that the security of title conferred by registration would create a land market enabling fanners owning unviable plots or unworkable fragments to sell them off to neighbours who would be in a position to develop them more effectively. In this way “… energetic or rich Africans will be able to acquire more land and bad or poor farmers less, creating a landed and a landless class”, a process which he calls “a normal step in the evolution of a country”.

This article examines developments in the East African Community from October 2006 to April 2007, against the background of the challenge to the “elections” of members of the East African Legislative Assembly. The article also examines the saga over the Kenyan regional court judges, emanating from the decision to grant an injunction restraining the nine Kenyan nominees to the Assembly from taking office and to dismiss a recusal application brought against the court's Kenyan judges. The article explores the hurried amendments to the Community treaty in a largely political response to the regional court's decisions and the implications for the future of the court and the Community. The haste involved in amending the treaty itself raises concerns over the growing tendency to flout processes and procedures at the national and community levels for the sake of political expedience on the part of the partner states.

This article provides an overview of criminal justice policies adopted in Commonwealth Africa during the last 40 years. It shows that, far from attempting to devise policies appropriate to the needs of a developing contemporary African state, governments have pursued the same policies as their colonial predecessors, based on retribution and general deterrence. The criminal law has been used to secure social and economic objectives and concern about crime levels has led to an erosion of a defendant's rights and the introduction of increasingly harsh punishments. Prospects for the future are gloomy, particularly in states where definitions of criminality are contested.