The Irrelevance and Coloniality of International Economic Law: How African Teachers Must Drum Them Away

Abstract

Today still, no title in the existing African literature on international economic law covers enough ground to qualify as prescribed text for students on the continent. To cover the full and proper scope of a module on international economic law (IEL), lecturers cannot help but recommend a list of readings. However, these reading lists do not spare law teachers the sheer necessity to write or compile a textbook that runs the whole gamut of an IEL module because most of the texts typically recommended in those lists continue to mirror the coloniality of IEL as a broad discipline.

In light of this, I wondered how one could get IEL teachers in Africa to write their own books or to ‘beat their own drums’. In other words, how can law faculties in Africa overcome the coloniality of knowledge through the creation and publication of more relevant and useful knowledge? To tackle this question, I have divided the substance of this reflection piece into four parts. The first part examines the problem of relevance of IEL. Secondly, I expose the coloniality of IEL as currently taught. In IEL, coloniality manifests through three phenomena: Eurocentrism, doctrinalism, and neoliberalism. Next, I sketch the sorts of interventions that governments, law faculties and other stakeholders should embark upon to decolonize IEL with local theories. This entails targeted interventions at the level of theories, methodologies, finances, and institutions.

In this piece, I press home the point that law teachers in Africa must ‘beat their own drums’ to decolonize the teaching of IEL by producing texts imbued with local theories. To assist teachers in those noble efforts, I put together and annotated a bibliography for IEL modules on the continent. That theory-rich bibliography appears in the fourth and final part of this piece.

The coloniality of IEL has resulted in the omnipresence of Europe and the omni-absence of Africa in the foremost IEL titles. A student can complete an IEL module or even an entire LL.B degree without reading a single book from an African or indigenous scholar. Because of the coloniality of IEL, students in Africa get taught but do not necessarily get educated. Thus, in suggesting a theory-rich bibliography for IEL modules on the continent, I hope that it will equip teachers and their students with a rock-solid foundation for them to drum away the coloniality of IEL.