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Africa as a continent has experienced a continuous increase in the cost of healthcare as its demands increase. With many of these African countries living below the poverty threshold, Africans continue to die from preventable and curable diseases. Population increases have led to an increase in demands for healthcare, which unfortunately have been met with inequitable distribution of drugs. Hence, the outcomes from healthcare interventions are frequently not maximized. These problems notably call for some economic principles and policies to guide medication selection, procurement, or donation for population prioritization or health insurance. Pharmacoeconomics drives efficient use of scarce or limited resources to maximize healthcare benefits and reduce costs. It also brings to play tools that rate therapy choice based on the quality of life added to the patient after a choice of intervention was made over an alternative. In this paper, we commented on the needs, prospect, and challenges of pharmacoeconomics in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acknowledging the classic conflict between the trade and human right regimes, this paper argues that the realities of the least developed regions create an instance where the fundamental motivation for economic integration regimes like ECOWAS is not at odds with the human rights principle. Rather, such economic integration regimes are in themselves the very mechanism for the achievement of human rights as conceptualized within the normative framework of the African human rights system. Through an examination of the ECOWAS Revised Treaty provisions and an exposition on the evolution of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, this paper argues that the drafters of the Revised Treaty created a document that took cognizance of human rights. With the key goal being the achievement of development, ECOWAS's greater legitimacy derives from the lack of development in its constituent parts. As such, ECOWAS fulfills the Article 22(2) development duty imposed on member states by the African Charter and is increasingly fine-tuning its activities to follow the Articles 22(1) and 24 guidance on this duty. Therefore, ECOWAS as a mechanism for the achievement of the human right to development collapses Garcia's chasm between the underpinning principles of trade and human rights because it presents regional integration as a utilitarian mechanism for the achievement of deontological rights. While enforcement is crucial to maintaining the commitment for which ECOWAS exists, the lack of enforcement does not obliterate the theoretical interpretation of ECOWAS as a rights tool; it only impeaches the political will of its member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa boasts one-third of the world's mineral resources. Mineral development, if governed by appropriate legal frameworks, is key to facilitating development in Africa. With this realization, the African Union (AU) adopted the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) in 2009, which aims to prioritize African industrialization, safeguard the environment, build and utilize local labor force capacity, facilitate transparency, and improve revenue-sharing mechanisms in Africa. However, at the same time, the dawn of artificial intelligence (AI) and complex levels of automation is making quick inroads into the mineral development sector. This article argues that, in response to the AMV, over half of Africa's governments enacted a new generation of laws that seek to maximize the retention of mining benefits within the country. Focusing on labor-related local content provisions of these laws as an example, it highlights the inclusion or enhancement of provisions on local content aimed at building and utilizing local labor force capacity to address employment challenges in these countries. It concludes that because these reforms do not envisage the dawn of advanced automation, the elements of the law that aim to address growing unemployment may already be ineffective on arrival. Local content provisions on labor speak to the need to hire locally with due attention to efficiency and economy. However, they are in tension with automation, which is also aimed at improving efficiency, economy, and safety, thus quashing the push for increases in local labor force numbers before it can materialize. Closer and specific engagement between industry and government, for example, through collaborative multi-stakeholder sectorplanning commissions, is necessary to plan for the impact of automation, and a reframing of local content may be necessary to ensure that the sector's legal framework is responsive to the realities of automation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]