International Research Collaboratives
Organizers
Prof. Sara Ghebremusse, Mr. Temitope Onifade
Various legal responses have failed to promote development in Africa, evidenced by unsuccessful legal interventions and conditionalities. Emphasis on pure institutional and economic approaches to law and development constrained nuanced understanding of law within development arenas, including politics, economy, health, education, security and environment, among others. Using Africa’s most recent development formulation, Agenda 2063, we will re-imagine the sociolegal foundation of development in Africa to rethink the challenges and find new pathways. We ask a central question: how should law respond to Africa’s development challenges under Agenda 2063? The initial contribution we make will be to revisit the understanding of law and development under Agenda 2063 (the deconstruction). After, we will create new knowledge on how our renewed sense of law could steer our renewed understanding of development under Agenda 2063 (the reconstruction). We will explore not only how law could affect development, but also how development could influence law. This exercise will lead us to an enhanced understanding of how to theorise and design law to shape the knowledge and practice of development in Africa.