Research at the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa (CCLA) will benefit from two significant endowments launched at a UCT event in Lagos on 6 May 2014: the Olu Akinkugbe Business Law in Africa Fellowship and the TY Danjuma Fund for Law and Policy Development in Africa.
The Olu Akinkugbe Business Law in Africa Fellowship will bring visiting researchers from other African countries to the CCLA for a six-week visit, focused on producing a paper for publication on a topical aspect of business law in Africa. The inaugural fellow is expected to arrive in October 2014.
The US$5 million TY Danjuma Fund for Law and Policy Development in Africa (TYD Fund), instituted by Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, will support CCLA research, capacity building and research-dissemination events. The TYD Fund provides sustained support for research that is aimed at addressing African issues with African solutions in response to the ongoing changes in the economic, social and political landscape of the continent, including the growing global investment interest in the continent.
CCLA chair Professor Salvatore Mancuso said that, when it comes to its legal traditions, Africa is not always given an equal footing. “It is assumed that Europeans – westerners – can speak for Africa, given that African legal systems are seen as a simple heritage of the former colonial powers, despite a rich, peculiar and variegated African legal culture. This is because it is assumed that there is no law out of what has been transplanted during and after the colonial period.” The fund will seek to change this by exploring new ways through which African countries can develop their legal systems to make them effective and responsive to contemporary developments on the continent and more broadly.
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