What Africa Wants: African State Responses and Solutions for Investor-State Dispute Resolution

According to the 2020 School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Arbitration in Africa Survey Report, some of the most notable among these arbitral institutions are: * the Arbitration Foundation of Southern Africa (AFSA); * the Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (CRCICA); * the Ouagadougou Arbitration and Mediation & Conciliation Centre (OAMCC); * the О HADA Common Court of Justice and Arbitration Centre (CCJA) ; and * the Kigali International Arbitration Centre (KIAC) ? [...]Kenya has made significant changes that ultimately led to the establishment of the Nairobi Centre for International Arbitration (NCIA).4 South Africa also passed its International Arbitration Act in 2017 to incorporate the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law into its national law - this has enabled the AFSA to grow internationally.5 There is also the recent reform of ОHADAs Uniform Act on Arbitration and of the Common Court of Justice and Arbitration (CCJA), which has modernised the entire applicable framework. The new versions of the Uniform Act (and the rules of the CCJA) also make an express reference to investment arbitration.6 Finally, Ethiopia ratified the New York Convention in 2020 and updated its legislation by enacting the Arbitration and Conciliation Working Procedure, which includes provisions that, inter alia, allow for the establishment of arbitral centres by government authorities or private persons.7 Second, African states have sought to take advantage of the investment opportunities they offer to international companies to foster development of tailor-made institutions. To provide context, the vast majority of BITs involving African states were concluded in the 1990s and early 2000s, largely following frameworks developed in capital-exporting countries.14 As of October 2019, 106 investment treaty arbitration claims had been filed against African states, with claims totalling $55.5bn between 1993 and 2021, with ten of these claims having a value of $1 bn.15 There have been some significant awards against African states - for instance, in 2018 Egypt paid $2bn to Union Penosa Gas as a result of their investor-state dispute.16 International arbitral institutions, such as the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), have also been criticised for a lack of African representation (lack of African arbitrators, committee members, etc), particularly when compared with the important c