4th SOAS Arbitration in Africa Conference

Joyce Williams is the program anchor at the 2018 SOAS/Kigali arbitration conference and is the fourth in the series of SOAS Arbitration in Africa conferences. The Kigali conference primarily aims to examine how African arbitration practitioners can better support the development of both domestic and international arbitration in their individual countries, regions and collectively across the continent and globally.

In this conference series, we have interrogated how arbitration institutions, national courts and the executive and legislative arms of governments can better support the development of arbitration in Africa. At these conferences, participants from across the continent and outside the continent have shared their experiences of arbitrating in Africa. Relevant functionaries from the arbitration centres, judiciaries and governments have started changing their behaviour as a direct result of the exchanges at our conferences. In 2018, we shall focus on ourselves as arbitration practitioners with our foreign colleagues, to examine how we, as practitioners and users, can better support the development of (domestic and international) arbitration in the continent.