A Reflection on African Trade and Investment Wars in Context

African trade and investment wars and their implication for the development of international economic law (IEL) in Africa are under-appreciated[1]. Except for a handful of literature in the last two decades, most of the scholarly work on economic integration in Africa has not focused on intra-African trade and investment wars. Yet, some of these trade wars have endured for many years. By trade wars, we mean the fracture of economic (trade and investment) relations between cooperating African States. We do not understand trade wars in the strict sense that trade economist or classic trade law do. These approaches understand trade wars as triggered when States decide to relate on the basis power-based tariff bargain as opposed to a rules-based regime. One narrative is that trade wars may be triggered as a consequence of governments’ unilateral behaviour that ignores the ‘impacts of their actions on political and economic agents in the opposite country.’