Revue - Les Cahiers de l'Arbitrage N°2 - 2023 - 12

AFRICA SPECIAL ISSUE
pre-colonial history and culture of Africa. Other scholars have had similar quests to
fill the gaps in the knowledge about Africa's ancient peoples. In Great Kingdoms of
Africa, 2
edited by John Parker, the reader is treated to expositions on the Kingdoms
of Ancient Egypt and Nubia, the Sudanic Empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai,
the Yoruba and Benin Kingdoms, and much more. Another magisterial work, this
time by the American Howard French, 3
the making of the modern world. In A Fistful of Shells, Toby Green focuses on
cultural transformations and economic inequality. 4
highlights the contribution of Africans to
These and other works on a
general history of Africa follow in the footsteps of the pioneering General History
of Africa Project (GHA) by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO). The GHA corpus is currently available in eight volumes,
with new volumes being developed.
A common lament amongst historians has been that there are few resources
to work from when writing about African history. A dearth of written records
and few archaeological finds have hindered writing about African history. What
history has been written has often focused on a few regions, such as ancient
Egypt, where resources have been plentiful. But in recent times, there is more
material being written about the history of African cultural practices, art, trade and
architecture. Yet, there are no works about African legal history. If law is an aspect
of civilisation, then the study of African civilisations remains incomplete for as
long as the legal histories of Africa remain unwritten - especially the legal histories
before colonisation.
There can be little doubt that African kings, queens, chiefs, and councils of
elders played an integral role in resolving disputes in African societies throughout
time. Dispute resolution in earlier times might have been a mixture of mediation
and what we might today call arbitration. As Islamic law was introduced to
Africa and Europeans extended their laws to their African territories, these new
laws combined with African laws to create mixed systems of law that persist
today. A legal history of Africa while welcome, is beyond the scope of this paper.
This paper has more modest ambitions - to briefly chart the development of
international arbitration in Africa. It will do so by weaving through commercial,
investment and inter-State arbitration. This approach aims to leave the reader
with an impression of the key moments and developments in international
arbitration in Africa over the last few centuries. The paper starts by looking at the
period between antiquity and the middle ages to discern whether we can identify
the roots of international arbitration. It then turns to the impact of the dramatic
changes occasioned by European trade, settlement, and colonisation between the
eighteenth century and the early twentieth century. Next, it looks to the history of
international arbitration after independence. Finally, it turns to the recent history
in the twenty-first century.
Throughout this piece, the author is conscious of the audacity and futility
of writing about Africa as a monolith. A region so geographically vast, and so
culturally and legally diverse renders any general history of Africa meaningless. But
2. John Parker (ed.) Great Kingdoms of Africa, Thames Hudson (2023).
3. Howard W. French, Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern
World, 1471 to the Second World War, Liveright Publishing Corporation (2021).
4. Toby Green, A Fistful of Shells, Penguin Books (2019).
286
The Paris Journal of International Arbitration 2023‑2
Revue - Les Cahiers de l'Arbitrage N°2 - 2023

Table des matières de la publication Revue - Les Cahiers de l'Arbitrage N°2 - 2023
