Assessing the Organisation pour l’harmonisation en Afrique du droit des affaires’s Contributions to Poverty Reduction in Africa: A Grounded Outlook

This article inquires into the Organisation pour l’harmonisation du droit des affaires en Afrique (OHADA)’s claims to innovation for its law reform processes and into its ambition to become a precedent for pursuing legal integration among countries elsewhere in Africa and in the world. It seeks to assess whether the OHADA regime effectively contributes to, or has the potential to contribute to, socio-economic development in member states. In making this assessment, the article revisits assumptions about the part that international and Western inspired law should play in development, institutional renovation and law reform in OHADA countries. The article argues that a shift of paradigms should occur in OHADA and international economic law from the foreign investor credo towards a more nuanced empirically informed approach to law making. Legal, policy and economic experts should concentrate more efforts on the needs, practices and realities of businesses in OHADA states, particularly local enterprises the majority of which are micro, small and medium (MSM) and are regulated by both formal and unofficial rules. Focusing on facilitating the operation of local businesses as well as on poverty reduction rather than on making regional economic integration, the dominant goal of business law reform in the OHADA can lead to commercial rules and strategies more successful at fostering sustainable development in member parties.