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African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a free trade agreement among the states of Africa. The primary goal of this agreement is to make a single market for goods and services by removing trade barriers across Africa. AfCFTA has a dispute settlement body, trades in goods and services, intellectual property, investment policy, competition policy and digital trade in its different phases. These things are promising but have some legal barriers that can cause the objectives to fail. This paper aims to discover those legal barriers that can make a difference in this continental trade. Also, this paper will try to show the relationship between African reality and the texts outlined in the agreement. In addition to these aspects, the paper aims to give solutions from the legal perspective of these problems and suggestions to improve regarding upcoming texts related to this agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic caught the world unprepared, with containment measures impacting both global supply chains and agri-commodity flows. The public health crisis raised some urgent questions: "how can fish and other aquatic foods and supply chains be prioritized as health-related interventions to avert both a malnutrition crisis and gender inequality?" Furthermore, "what are the integrated responses, investment opportunities, and governance mechanisms to effectively address the pandemic?" As "super foods," diets of fish and aquatic foods provide animal-source protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and micronutrients, including both vitamins and minerals, necessary for both the ill and the healthy. The affordability and accessibility of fish could address food and nutrition security needs under lockdown and border closures, boost immune systems, and increase commodity trade. This analytical piece focuses on the continent of Africa, where malnutrition is pervasive, but also where local aquatic food supplies can be utilised during lockdowns and border closures. The paper provides governance insights on national budget support programs and portfolio restructuring to strengthen local aquatic foods production systems to meet dietary needs. Furthermore, the authors advocate for a coordinated multi-sectoral intervention across several well-being domains in the immediate and medium-term involving various partnerships. These integrated responses will mutually limit the contagion while providing support to functional fish value chains for healthy diets, livelihoods, cross-border trade, and long-term macroeconomic recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• In the post-financial crisis era, fiscal challenges have led countries adopt a more market-based means of development finance. • The state is not a sheer subsidizer distorting market in favor of policy objectives, but a risk-sharing, profit-seeking equity investor. • China's investment fund offers not only equity shares but also state-related resources to assist private firms' business expansion in Africa. • Stateness has prevented the investment fund from choosing the most financially promising projects or withdrawing from the failing ones. The post-2008 financial crisis era has witnessed a significant change in the global development landscape. Fiscal challenges have led countries that historically provided state-led, gift-like development assistance to adopt a more market-based means of development finance driven by self-interest. This allows us to reconsider the roles of the state and the market in development by focusing on the China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund), China's first official development-oriented investment fund and a subsidiary of the China Development Bank, the world's largest national development bank. This paper draws from interviews and participant observations involving CADFund, its partners, and project companies in Africa to examine how China's official finance mobilizes private investment to facilitate global development. The findings indicate that the state-led equity fund has catalyzed the start-up and expansion of Chinese overseas private enterprises by providing otherwise inaccessible equity support and channeling additional state-related resources to empower long-term business development. Meanwhile, stateness has created an adverse selection problem, preventing CADFund from choosing the most financially promising projects or withdrawing from the failing ones. The paper sheds light on the potential challenges facing development finance institutions in employing equity investment as a tool for reconciling long-term development objectives and short-term commercial objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examine the impact of large-scale land acquisitions on interpersonal trust in Africa. • We find that land deals disrupt local social fabrics by reducing trust. • Trust in relatives is particularly affected by large-scale land investments. • The negative impact of land deals on trust is considerably stronger among women compared to men. The livelihoods of rural populations in Africa are closely tied to small-scale farming. In recent years, private investors as well as governments have shown a growing interest in large-scale acquisition of arable land across the continent. While researchers have started to analyze the local economic and environmental impacts of such investments, their socio-political as well as psychological consequences remain poorly understood. This paper investigates how changes in land ownership patterns caused by large-scale land acquisitions affect the level of interpersonal trust among rural communities. We maintain that the transition from community and individual-smallholder land ownership into large-scale investor property has a negative impact on local levels of trust. Furthermore, we assume that the deterioration of trust caused by large-scale land investments is stronger among women than men. To test our claims, we connect circa 71,000 respondents from Afrobarometer surveys to georeferenced information on the location of land deals from 33 African countries. Relying on a difference-in-differences type of empirical strategy as well as an instrumental variable approach, we show that large-scale land investments indeed disrupt local social fabrics by reducing interpersonal trust. Our results suggest that trust in relatives is particularly affected by large-scale land acquisitions. In addition, we find that land deals reduce personalized trust among women but not necessarily among men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges and opportunities facing African organizations reflect a long history of tensions, tragedies, triumphs, and accomplishments in relationships across continental boundaries. For example, Africa has long been a source of critical minerals and other raw materials that are integral to a wide range of global industries, but scholars of management have not integrated an understanding of Africa's role in global commerce fully in research on international exchange. Perhaps most importantly, scholarship in the field of management has not addressed the extensive opportunities for the development of innovative ideas, capabilities, capacities, inventions, and breakthroughs that would be made possible by international investments in human development and human capital on the continent. Resolving African problems and pursuing African opportunity requires renewed commitment by management scholars to this agenda. In this introductory article, we focus particularly on the structure of relationships across continental boundaries through global value chains (GVCs) and the role political and corporate sustainability conversations and initiatives play. We also seek to explore their implications especially for African organizations that simultaneously pursue economic growth and constructive social and environmental impact. We conclude with a framework for further study by management scholars on these important issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Significant levels of funding have been provided to low- and middle-income countries for development assistance for health, with most funds coming through direct bilateral investment led by the USA and the UK. Direct attribution of impact to large-scale programs funded by donors remains elusive due the difficulty of knowing what would have happened without those programs, and the lack of detailed contextual information to support causal interpretation of changes. Methods: This study uses the synthetic control analysis method to estimate the impact of one donor's funding (United States Agency for International Development, USAID) on under-five mortality across several low- and middle-income countries that received above average levels of USAID funding for maternal and child health programs between 2000 and 2016. Results: In the study period (2000–16), countries with above average USAID funding had an under-five mortality rate lower than the synthetic control by an average of 29 deaths per 1000 live births (year-to-year range of − 2 to − 38). This finding was consistent with several sensitivity analyses. Conclusions: The synthetic control method is a valuable addition to the range of approaches for quantifying the impact of large-scale health programs in low- and middle-income countries. The findings suggest that adequately funded donor programs (in this case USAID) help countries to reduce child mortality to significantly lower rates than would have occurred without those investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]