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Colonialism, Legal Borrowing, and Disruption in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2019

Olufunmilayo B. Arewa*
Affiliation:
Shusterman Professor of Business and Transactional Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law; Fellow, Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Recht als Kultur,” Universität Bonn, May–June 2019. A.B., Harvard College, M.A., Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (Anthropology); A.M. University of Michigan (Applied Economics); J.D. Harvard Law School. Email: oarewa@temple.edu.

Extract

Disruptive and other technologies have spread throughout Africa in recent years. Many see the digital economy as a potential new path that might enable leapfrogging that narrows economic and technological gaps between Africa and the rest of the world. Today, more than half a century after the end of colonialism, far too many remain poor in Africa. High rates of economic growth in the early years of the new millennium have decreased, while the population in many African countries is set to double between now and 2050. Unemployment and underemployment are pervasive in many African countries today.

Type
Diverse Perspectives on the Impact of Colonialism on International Law
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by The American Society of International Law

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References

1 UN Dep't Econ. & Soc. Affairs, World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision 1 (2015); Mo Ibrahim Found., Africa Ahead: The Next 50 Years 5 (2013).

2 General Act of the Conference of Berlin Concerning the Congo, Signed at Berlin, February 26, 1885, 3 AJIL 7 (1909) (hereinafter Berlin Act).

3 The Royal Niger Company to Sir J. Pauncefote (Dec. 20, 1886), British National Archives FO 403.

4 Alan Watson, Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law (1993).

5 Juan Obarrio, The Spirit of the Laws in Mozambique 77 (2014).

6 Charles Mwalimu, The Nigerian Legal System, Vol. 2: Private Law 419 (2009).

7 Id.

8 Companies Act No. 8, 1912.

9 Mwalimu,supra note 6, at 419.

10 C.A. Bayley, Indigenous and Colonial Origins of Comparative Economic Development: The Case of Colonial India and Africa, at 5 (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4474, Jan. 2008).