Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences (AIRESS) organizes a seminar on Thursday, September 22nd at 12:30 p.m (GMT+1) at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University - Rabat Campus, under the theme ''Three Paths to Empowering African Constitutionalism''

 
Our guest speaker for this seminar is Jan ERK Professor at the Faculty of Governance, Economics and Social Sciences.

ABSTRACT

“In this presentation, we look at three different paths to empowering homegrown indigenous constitutionalism in Africa. The main scholarly goal is to identify the different types of relationship indigenous traditional laws and traditional governance structures of Africa have with the laws and institutions of the modern state. The aim is to distill lessons, insights, and observations which have comparative relevance for the study of non-Western constitutions and constitutionalism. We examine three case studies from Botswana, South Africa, and Ethiopia as part of a search for patterns that hold across both time and place. Our investigation is, thus, a) a comparison across these three case studies; but it is also, b) a historic comparison across time. That is, each case study contains a comparison of the different legal and political mechanisms managing the relationship between the traditional and the modern during the different constitutional phases spanning pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. “