African Arbitration Association takes home the GAR Award for Best Development

On Thursday 4 April, the newly established African Arbitration Association (AfAA), a project with roots in ICCA’s 2016 Mauritius Congress, received the 2019 GAR Award for Best Development.

Launched in June 2018, the AfAA seeks to promote African arbitration and African arbitrators, and to coordinate activities regarding capacity-building, technical assistance and the provision of on-line resources on the continent. Calls to create an association that would promote international arbitration in Africa were developed and expanded at the ICCA Congress in Mauritius in May 2016 and followed by ICCA-hosted Consultative Workshops in Cairo, Abuja and Kigali in 2017 and 2018. ICCA Executive Director and AfAA Board Director Lise Bosman said she was proud to have ICCA involved in such an important project saying, “African arbitration practice has made impressive progress in recent years, and this initiative seeks to consolidate that progress and to place African arbitrators and arbitration at the centre of global practice”.

Asked about the AfAA’s award from GAR, founding President and former Attorney General of Nigeria Bayo Ojo said: “On behalf of the AFAA, I wish to thank GAR and all those who voted for the AFAA for the award. It was a pleasant surprise indeed for all of us. It will motivate us to continue to strive to achieve the objective of the Association which is to among other things promote Arbitration in Africa".

For more information on AfAA, please click here.