Bibliographie sélective OHADA

La relation dialectique qui unit les traités bilatéraux d’investissement et la jurisprudence du Centre International de Règlement des Différends relatifs aux Investissements (CIRDI) a fait émerger un droit international des investissements. La rencontre de ces deux dynamiques a permis de dépasser leur caractère a priori isolé et fragmenté, pour aboutir à un véritable système juridique international, doté d’une structure, d’une logique et de principes propres. En effet, rien ne pouvait laisser envisager une telle évolution, le régime de l’investissement international se fondant sur une multitude de traités bilatéraux et sur une instance arbitrale ne faisant qu’héberger des tribunaux éphémères. Les mouvements de va-et-vient qui unissaient ces deux phénomènes ont permis de lui donner des normes quasi-universelles, mais aussi un véritable juge à la compétence extensive et surtout de lui insuffler l’unité, l’efficacité, la cohérence et la complétude, faisant de plus en plus ressembler le droit international des investissements à un véritable ordre juridique qui, même s’il relève du droit international, lui permet également d’évoluer.

The thesis covers one of the investment standards of international investment law, namely the full protection and security standard. In Part I, the study is introduced in terms of structure and substance. Chapter 1 provides a description of the scope of the research topic and a definition of its terms and structure. Chapter 2 covers the historical development of the full protection and security standard. Part II deals with three fundamental issues concerning the standard: sources, interpretation and content. Chapter 3 contains a discussion dealing with the various sources of the standard. Each source will be studied independently. Chapter 4 will address general issues with regard to interpretation, such as to what extent the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties influences the process of interpretation. Chapter 5 deals with the content of the standard of full protection and security, including conceptual issues relating to the substantive elements of which the standard consists. Moreover, the chapter will ask questions as to which underlying issues are needed to explore when a due diligence assessment is made in order to determine whether a state has fulfilled its obligations to provide protection and security. Part III deals with issues relating to the violations of the standard. In Chapter 6, the violations of the standard and their many manifestations will be analyzed. The chapter will address whether certain fact-based scenarios can be established in which the standard is most commonly violated. Finally, Chapter 7 contains a summary of findings.

Le développement du droit communautaire en Afrique de l’Ouest couvre aujourd’hui un large champ qui s’étend aux investissements demeurés au lendemain des indépendances des États africains dans le périmètre de leur souveraineté. Les enjeux actuels du droit international des investissements, en raison des exigences de la mondialisation des économies, ont contraint les États de l’espace CEDEAO et UEMOA, importateurs de capitaux, à faire converger leur réglementation des investissements afin de favoriser leur attractivité et d’en tirer le meilleur parti. La difficulté d’un tel objectif réside dans la nécessité d’arriver à concilier leurs intérêts avec ceux des investisseurs, qui ne sont pas toujours convergents. The development of community law in West Africa nowadays covers a wide field extending to investments which, in the aftermath of independence, remained within the scope of sovereignty of African states. The current challenges of international investment law, because of the requirements of economic globalisation, have compelled ECOWAS and WAEMU countries, as importers of capital, to ensure convergence of their investment regulations so as to make them more attractive and to get the most out of them. The difficulty of such an objective lies in the need to successfully reconcile their interests with those of investors, which do not always converge.

Infrastructure is one of the main parameters of economic growth and a country‘s competitiveness depends on the provision and maintenance of efficient and productive infrastructure assets. However, Nigeria, like most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest quantity and poorest quality of stocks of infrastructure assets in the world and this phenomenally poor infrastructure has remained an impediment to development in the country. Decades of sub-optimal investment, poor maintenance culture and the fact that the required infrastructure investments could not be accommodated within the available fiscal space as a result of budgetary constraints have all contributed to the Nigeria‘s infrastructure deficit. The immediate outcome of this however is that the available infrastructure assets across the Nigerian landscape are in decrepit state and absurdly inadequate. Besides, the present demand for basic infrastructure services has grown astronomically out-stripping the supply capacity of the existing ones. Closing the infrastructure financing gap will however require increased investment by private investors through creative financing in an enabling legal and financial environment. Outside the budgetary constraints, the absence of efficient maintenance and management of infrastructure assets and quality service delivery by the public sector are some of the reasons why procurement of public infrastructure stocks by government through the traditional approach is no longer plausible and hence, the general appeal of the public-private partnership framework. However, despite all the potentials, the public private partnership technique in Nigeria has not made an appreciable impact in closing the infrastructure gaps due to lack of access to long-term financing. It is against this back-drop that this study has sought to investigate how reforms of the legal and financial infrastructure could widen access to financing through innovative financial resource mobilization in scaling-up infrastructure development and service delivery to the teeming Nigeria population. Therefore, the central thesis of this study is that the inadequacy of appropriate laws and inefficient financial system are partly responsible for the huge financing gaps in the Nigeria‘s infrastructure market and with the legal and financial reforms, an enabling legal and financial environment that would open up space for resource mobilization through innovative financing techniques and sources will be created thereby widening access to long-term financing and increasing the appetite for private investment in the nation‘s public infrastructure assets and services. So, the overarching objective of this thesis is to explore how legal and financial system reforms can facilitate the development of financial models and instruments that can help mobilize financial resources to fund infrastructure and bridge the huge infrastructure financing gaps in Nigeria in a sustainable fashion. Given the infrastructure poverty that constrains economic growth and development in Nigeria, the outcomes of this proposed study would help inform the need for the legal and financial system reforms to unlock resources in addressing the problems of financing gaps in infrastructure projects development in Nigeria. Besides, such outcomes based on the Nigerian experience in infrastructure financing and development may be turned into valuable knowledge for policy –making and further research in Nigeria. Copyright