Africa Newsletter Edition 1, 2021

It is a pleasure to start this edition with an interview that took place earlier this year between our Head of Africa practice, Andrew Skipper and Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Africa, Emma Wade-Smith OBE. They both co-chair the UK government’s Africa Investors Group, and the discussion continues the conversation around themes raised at the UK-Africa Investment Conference held in January 2021.

We then move on to two articles authored by members of our Paris team. The first one discusses the prospects for Africa following the launch of trading under the AfCFTA, which also happened at the beginning of the year. In the second, lawyers from our Paris arbitration team talk about how a recent decision from the CCJA, the Supreme Court for OHADA legislation, reinforced its proarbitration approach.

Two South Africa focused articles follow. In the first, Wessel Badenhorst, our Office Managing Partner in Johannesburg looks at how the recent increase in demand for commodities will lead to a rise in foreign direct investment in mining across Africa. Then, in a joint article, two of our lawyers (from Johannesburg and Frankfurt) compare the recent POPIA in South Africa to the UK’s GDPR provisions.

As always it is great to be able to feature some articles co-authored with or written by some of our relationship firms. The first of these discusses opportunities for the construction industry across the continent; we then take a look at the changes which have been made to Ethiopia’s Commercial code; and we round off this section with the latest joint article from our A Local Perspective series, which looks at the renewable energy sector across Africa but with particular focus on Uganda.

We then include two pieces which following on from recent events. The first was written after our participation in the Ministry of Justice’s UK-Africa Legal Services Conference, and Andrew Skipper discusses the role of UK Legal Services across Africa. We then have a piece about our recent Business Leaders Series, which has a regional focus.

We finish with our usual feature focusing on some of our recent pro bono highlights in Africa. Don’t forget to also look at the information about some of our recent work, and the HL Africa events calendar.

We hope you enjoy this edition of the newsletter. As always, please get in touch if you have any questions or comments.

Authored by Andrew Skipper and Alison Diarra.