Legal aspects of business in West/Central Africa

The Professional Development Project of the Faculty of Law, UCT, in conjunction with the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa, is pleased to present a five-day course on the legal aspects of doing business in West and Central Africa on 5 to 9 October 2015.

About the course
Doing business in Africa has a number of challenges such as:

The high cost of doing business, which is a significant barrier to entry, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises
- Poor or non-existent infrastructure
- Regulatory and tax uncertainty, which creates planning problems and unexpected costs
- Difficult and costly logistics (linked extensively, but not exclusively, to infrastructure deficiencies)
- A surfeit of bureaucracy, which creates bottlenecks and inefficiencies
- The absence of effective legal frameworks
- Corruption
- Skills shortages
- Currency fluctuations

Political risk is another challenge, and includes nationalisations, political change or the sudden eruption of conflict. Despite this, however, many companies are choosing to become involved in doing business in West and Central Africa as there are a number of untapped markets and key opportunities that are worth pursuing. These include those in energy, education, infrastructure construction projects, food and drink, and information technology. This course has been designed to assist interested parties in plotting a course for their investment in business in West and Central African countries and equipping them with the legal framework within which they should be interacting with stakeholders.

The region considered is made up of:
Benin
BurkinaFaso
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Congo
Cote d'Ivoire
Democratic Republic of Congo
Equatorial Guinea
Gambia
Gabon
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea Bissau
Liberia
Mali
Mauritania
Niger
Nigeria
Senegal
Sierra Leone
São Tomé and Príncipe
Togo

Who will benefit from this course?
Lawyers, legal practitioners, legal advisors in companies, company personnel tasked with expanding business into Africa and anyone else interested in the legal aspects of doing business in West and Central Africa.

After the course, participants should:
- Know what the challenges are in doing business with these countries.
- Know what the opportunities are for doing business in these countries.
- Know what procedures must be followed for doing business in West and Central Africa.
- Understand the mission of ECOWAS which is to promote economic integration in "all fields of economic activity" and how this affects doing business with West African countries.
- Understand the OHADA system of business laws and implementing institutions in Africa and how they affect doing business in the region.
- Understand the other experiences of legal integration in the region (CIMA on insurance, OAPI on intellectual property, CIPRES on social welfare) and how they also affect doing business in the region.

Course outline
Day 1:
- A detailed account of the business regulatory environment in West Africa.
- Overview of the legal systems in West Africa with special reference to Anglophone countries
- Business registration
- Taxation
- Property acquisition
- Foreign direct investment incentive
- Cross-border trade under the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme
- Dispute resolution/enforcement of contracts and judgments
- Insolvency
- Competition

Day 2:
- A general overview of CIMA, OAPI and CIPRES; a few notes on VEMCA, CODEAO and CEMAC.
- A general introduction: the OHADA Treaty, the Uniform Acts and the OHADA institutions (the Council of Ministers of Justice and Finance, the Permanent Secretariat, the Advanced Regional School of Magistracy (ERSUMA), the Joint Court of Justice and Arbitration).
- General Commercial Law (the status of trader, the trade and personal property credit register, the commercial lease and business, the trade intermediary and the commercial sale).
Some words about the carriage of goods by road.

Day 3:
- Commercial companies and economic interest groups (the formation, the functioning and the dissolution/winding-up of a commercial company, the civil liability of company executives, the legal links between companies and the different operations, the sleeping and de facto partnership, the public calls for capital etc.).
- Brief overview of the Uniform Act Relating to the Law of Cooperatives.
- Simplified debt recovery and enforcement under OHADA law.

Day 4:
- The arbitration under OHADA law: interpretation and enforcement of the Uniform Acts. An overview of the Uniform Act of Arbitration and the CCJA role.
- Collateral securities, secured debts (transferable guarantees and real property securities), distribution and classification of securities according to the related Uniform Act.

Day 5:
- The prevention and the remedies of difficulties experienced by businesses: insolvency, preventive settlement procedures and bankruptcy.
- Practical concerns and perspectives (Acts in preparation/Acts scheduled for complete revision / OHADA's implementation).

Course presenters
Patrick De Wolf
is a partner in the corporate practice group of the Brussels office at the law firm De Wolf and Partners.

He is an expert in corporate law, deals with international arbitration matters and acts both as arbitrator and as attorney. Patrick is a lecturer at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) where he teaches corporate law and the principles of commercial law. He is a member of the Brussels Bar Council, a member of the Centre Jean Renauld (UCL), a member of the Belgian Centre for Mediation and Arbitration (CEPANI), the Chairman of the Belgian OHADA Club (Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa), Director of the Chamber of Commerce ACP/CBL, chairman of the Fonds Scientifique Jean Bastin and director of ICC Belgium.

Patrick is also the author of numerous articles and is regularly invited to a wide range of seminars and conferences as a speaker.

He obtained a law degree at the UCL (1985), a degree in administrative law (1986), a degree in tax law (1989) and joined the Brussels Bar in 1986. Patrick is one of the founding partners of the firm, was its managing partner from 2000 to 2010 and is now the senior partner.

Ashimizo Afadameh-Adeyemi specialises in Commercial Litigation, International Trade Law, Space Law and Policy and Public International Law. Prior to joining Sapphire and Breckinridge LP as a partner, he had practiced with the Law Firms of Taiwo Ajala & Co and Olisa Agbakoba & Associates, both in Lagos, Nigeria, and had conducted research at the Institute of Development and Labour Law at University of Cape Town.

With an LLM in International Law and a PhD in Commercial Law focusing on regional integration, Ashimizo brings in his expertise and understanding of the dynamics of international commercial transactions in West Africa in relation to other African sub-regions and economic blocs.

He is also the managing editor of the SADC Law Journal and has acted as consultant to the International Commission of Jurists on the review process of the SADC Tribunal. Ashimizo is the President-elect of the African Branch of the Society of International Economic Law (African International Economic Law Network). He is a visiting lecturer at the University of Lusaka, Zambia, where he teaches International Economic Law to Postgraduate Students. His professional affiliations include the Nigerian Bar Association, the Society of International Economic Law, African International Economic Law Network, the International Chamber of Commerce Young Arbitrators Forum, Space Generation Advisory Council, American Society of International Law and the South African International Law Interest Group.

Professor Salvatore Mancuso is Chair of Comparative Law in Africa at the UCT Faculty of Law where he heads up the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa (CCLA). Professor Mancuso has worked in corporate legal practice and academia.

He obtained a JD summa from the University of Palermo in 1985, followed by a European master for company lawyers in which he specialised in international arbitration law in 1990. He subsequently completed a PhD in Comparative Law from the University of Trieste.

Professor Mancuso has been a visiting or adjunct professor at various institutions in Africa including the Universities of Asmara (2003), Ghana (2008), Mauritius (2008), and the Eduardo Mondlane University Maputo (2010).

He has also been a visiting or adjunct professor at the University of Lisbon (Portugal), the Universities of Limoges and Reunion (France); the National University of Taipei (Taiwan); East China University of Politics and Law, Shanghai and the Universities of Trento, Trieste, Palermo and Salerno (Italy). Professor Mancuso is honorary professor of African Law at the Centre for African Laws and Society, Xiangtan University, China. He has authored numerous publications, among them, the books, Direito Comercial Africano - OHADA, (OHADA Law in Portuguese) (2012), Il diritto del Kenya (The Law of Kenya, 2006, Milan), Diritto commerciale africano (African Business Law, 2009, Naples), and the articles China in Africa and the Law (2012), Complexity of Transnational Sources: The OHADA Approach (2011), African Legal Hybridity (2010), The New African Law: Beyond the Difference Between Common Law and Civil Law (2008) and Trends on the Harmonization of Contract Law in Africa (2007).

Professor Mancuso is actively involved in the Organisation for the Harmonisation of Business Law in Africa (OHADA) and is a member of many professional associations including the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL-AIDC), the African Society of International and Comparative Law, the Italian Association of Comparative Law as well as being the founder of the Macao Association of Comparative Law.

In addition to Italian, Professor Mancuso speaks the three languages of the law in Africa, namely English, French and Portuguese.

Registration details
Programme and venue information:

Signing in will commence at 9am on the first day of the course unless otherwise advised. Each day will end at approximately 5pm. Instructions regarding the programme and directions to the venue will be sent to you electronically a week prior to the event.

Award of certificate:
A certificate of attendance from UCT will be issued to those who attend all five days. Please ensure that you sign the attendance register every day.

Closing date for registration:
One week prior to the course.

Registration and enquiries:
Please contact the Professional Development Project:
Paula Allen on 021 650 5558
Andrea Blaauw on 021 650 5413
Fax:021 650 5513
Email:az.ca.tcu@nella.aluap/az.ca.tcu@wuaalb.aerdna/az.ca.tcu@llafressaw.aneri
Or visit our website: www.lawatwork.uct.ac.za to download the registration form.

Date: 05 October 2015 to 09 October 2015
Time: 09:00 - 17:00
Venue: Cape Town
Cost: R10,000 per delegate. Fee includes course materials, parking, lunches, teas.

More info:

Instructions regarding the programme and directions to the venue will be sent to you electronically a week prior to the event.



 
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