Using Trade Laws to Protect African Interests

Originally published in THIS DAY, a Nigerian legal publication.

As African stakeholders increase trade with their counterparts in other countries, they are falling under foreign trade laws or themselves utilising domestic trade laws in their battle for market share.  However, not all governments are adequately equipped to tackle trade-related issues and continued diligence needs to come from the private sector (both businesses and individuals) to protect foreign and domestic market share.

One area where African governments and businesses have been quite active in recent years has been in the area of trade remedy laws - anti-dumping and countervailing duty, or safeguard measures.  African countries, whether it be the companies or the governments themselves, have recently been named in antidumping duty actions in countries ranging from the United States and the European Union to China, India, Brazil, and Mexico.  In other words, stakeholders have convinced their