International Investment Agreements (IIAs) and Sustainable Development: Are the African Reform Approaches a Possible Way out of the Global IIA Crisis?

The paper seeks to examine the African International Investment Agreement (IIA) reform approaches and their viability to reconcile investment protection and sustainable development. The first part examines African experiences with traditional IIAs and identifies their main impediments to the implementation of host states’ sustainable development policies. The second part discusses three reform elements used in modern African IIAs to promote sustainable foreign investment: a) the comprehensive integration of sustainable development in the substantive provisions of IIAs to maintain the host states’ rights to implement their sustainable development policies, b) the inclusion of investor obligations to ensure that investors contribute to sustainable development, c) the clarification of ISDS rules to prevent adverse impacts of arbitral awards on sustainable development policies of host states. The third part looks at the feasibility of these Africaspecific approaches to reconciling investment protection and sustainable development and the prospects and challenges of being adopted outside the African context.