7 – 8 SEPTEMBER, 2023
Organised by the University of the Free State
Bloemfontein, South Africa
SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS
ABSTRACT DEADLINE: 21 August 2023
Submit at: afrisocconference@gmail.com
The Mercantile Law Department at the University of the Free State (UFS) is organising the 1 st Annual AFRICAN Conference on Business, Law and Economics (ACBLE) in conjunction with the Mercantile Law Department at the University of Western Cape (UWC).
This is the first revolving Conference to be hosted under the activities of the African Society for Business, Law and Economics. This society was started in January 2023 as an initiative to create a platform where researchers, practitioners and students in law focussing on aspects of business and the economy can frequently converge to discuss topical areas of interest. The particular interest is around the economic analysis of the law. This field has been around since the 1800s and concentrates on the prediction of behaviour in response to legal rules. Thereafter, questions are then posed as to whether the effects of the legal rules are socially desirable.
While in the Global North, interest on the economic analysis of the law seems to have been growing over the last two decades, this has not been the case on the African continent. Accordingly, there is a need to foster an interest on this particular area of the law. This includes doctrinal work on business, law and economics as well as interdisciplinary research in these areas.
The theme for this year’s conference is: Dreams v Reality: The Practical Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and Its Protocols. Given the economic implications of the AfCFTA for the host state and their legal system, in particular, the rules related to business, there could perhaps not have been a better time to introduce this Annual Conference.
The AfCFTA is a game changer in terms of the trade and business agenda on the continent. It seeks to brings together 55-member states of the African Union (AU) and 8 Regional Economic Communities (RECs). It is a bold project to create a single market for goods and services on the continent serving an estimated 1.3 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of USD 3.4 trillion. The AfCFTA came into effect on the 30 th of May 2019 following the ratification of the instrument by 24 Member States. Trading under the AfCFTA
commenced on the 1 st of January 2021. Key to the success of the AfCFTA are the Protocols to Agreement on investment, intellectual
property rights (IPRs), competition policy and e-commerce. The adoption of these Protocols has been done in phases. Phase I of the process involved negotiations on trade in goods and services which have been subsequently completed. Phase II of the negotiations which was recently concluded involved the drafting of the Protocols on investment, IPRs and competition policy. Phase III will draft the final Protocol on e-commerce. While, as evidenced above, substantial progress has been made with regards to the AfCFTA, questions remain as to whether this initiative can successfully be implemented. Perhaps yet, the dream for a prosperous and united African continent could still be alive through this initiative?
Against this backdrop, prospective participants of the Conference should
therefore aim to submit papers on any of the following 6 sub-themes:
Category A: Core Regional Issues
- Trade in goods
- Trade in services
- Trade and investment facilitation
- Regionalisation
- Dispute settlement
- Competition law and policy
- Investment law and policy
- Intellectual property rights
- E-commerce
- Corporate governance
- Tax
- Banking, finance and insurance law
- Business human rights
- Consumer protection law
- Insolvency law
- Labour law
- Employment law
- Anti-money laundering law
- Anti-corruption law
- Environmental law
- Administrative law
- Constitutional law
- Immigration law
- Compliance
- Just transition
- Financial inclusion
- Sustainability
- Preservation of the acquis
- Parallelism
- Economic analysis
- Institutional theories
- Institution building
- Potential AfCFTA institutions
- Collaboration between AfCFTA institutions
- Collaboration of AfCFTA institutions with national and sub-regional institutions
Publication of Conference Proceedings:
The proceedings of the conference will be published in a special issue of the Law, Democracy, and Development Journal. This is a Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) accredited journal. The house style for the journal is available at: https://law.uwc.ac.za/images/stories/ldd/lddhousestyle_2020.pdf.Conference participants may submit up to two papers but are allowed to present only one. However, if the second paper has a co-author, the co-author may present the second paper.
The submissions for the conference must be original and must not have been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.
Only papers that fall within the criteria set out by the Law, Democracy and Development Journal will be considered for publication.
Registration:
Due to the fact that the Conference is Hybrid, participants must indicate their intention to participate in the conference either physically or virtually by alerting the conference organisers via email as soon as possible.Registration fees for the conference is R 1000 for those that are attending physically and R500 for those attending virtually.
Participants whose abstracts are accepted for presentation will be provided with banking details for payment of the registration fees.
Further registration details will be provided to participants whose abstracts would have been accepted and who would have paid the registration fees. The accepted participants must register before the closing date in order to minimise empty slots at the conference.
Contacts:
For questions on hotel bookings in Bloemfontein, please contact Mr Simbarashe Tavuyanago, Chairperson of the Local Organising Committee (LOC), at TavuyanagoS@ufs.ac.za.For any other questions, please email the Conference Chair, Dr Tinashe Kondo, at tkondo@uwc.ac.za.
Important conference dates:
Abstract submission Deadline: 21 August 2023Communication of Acceptance: 25 August 2023
Registration Deadline: 1 September 2023
Conference Dates: 7 – 8 September 2023
Submission of Final Papers: 31 October 2023
Peer Review: November 2023
Revisions: December – January
Special issue: March 2024
Download Document
