Africa: Corporate/Commercial Law

Njeri Wagacha sits down with Liz Fanning, Founder and CEO of CorpsAfrica, to explore her transformative journey from Peace Corps volunteer to building an organization dedicated to empowering young people and high-poverty rural communities across Africa. The conversation delves into African-led development, local ownership, youth engagement, and the critical importance of listening to communities as they identify solutions to their own challenges.

In 2017, a discovery in Nigeria's North-East unsettled the country: relief materials meant for families displaced by conflict had allegedly been diverted and were turning up for sale in open markets. It was a blunt reminder that generosity, on its own, guarantees nothing. Comparable concerns — that charitable platforms can be exploited for illicit financing, including terrorist financing — have surfaced both in Nigeria and across the world.

Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie (UUBO) demonstrates how strategic pro bono legal services can drive meaningful social impact across Nigeria and beyond. Through partnerships with global organizations and focused initiatives spanning healthcare advocacy, corporate governance support, and access to justice, the firm leverages its legal expertise to strengthen institutions and advance sustainable development aligned with UN SDGs.

Corporate financial management is often viewed as a technical discipline concerned with investment, financing, dividend policy and risk management, yet these decisions ultimately determine how corporate resources are committed, protected and deployed, making them matters of governance as much as finance.

Nigeria's energy industry is at the intersection of massive economic aspirations and significant environmental threats. The Niger Delta has been subjected to decades of oil extraction, which have left it mired in some of the world's worst pollution crises, but the individual corporate directors have escaped liability for the devastation that their companies wreak on the environment.

The Gauteng High Court's judgment in TMM Holdings v Skycastle Securities examines when litigation privilege protects documents from disclosure, specifically addressing whether insurance claim forms and investigative reports created for multiple purposes qualify for privilege. The court applied the dominant purpose test to determine if documents prepared simultaneously for insurance claims, internal investigations, and potential litigation must be disclosed in discovery proceedings.

The European Commission has proposed EU Inc., a harmonised 28th regime corporate legal framework designed to simplify cross-border business for startups and venture capital companies across the EU's twenty-seven Member States. While promising a more digital and uniform company form, questions remain about how harmonised it will truly be when critical aspects like share transfers, disputes, financing, insolvency and enforcement remain tied to national laws of individual Member States.

International investors look beyond an African startup’s product and growth potential. They also assess whether its corporate structure supports investment, protects intellectual property, enables expansion across multiple markets and can accommodate future funding rounds or an eventual exit.

The European Commission's proposal for EU Inc. represents the first genuine attempt to develop a directly applicable body of European company law designed to strengthen global competitiveness rather than merely coordinate national systems. This ambitious initiative seeks to address Europe's structural "scale-up gap" by providing legal infrastructure that enables innovative start-ups to access capital and scale without relocating outside the Union, while maintaining universal availability across all company

Kenya's Trust Administration Act, 2026 introduces a new framework for trusts with requirements for registration, beneficial ownership transparency, trustee duties and compliance obligations. The Act consolidates fragmented legislation into a single regime overseen by a Registrar of Trusts, fundamentally reshaping how trusts are administered and regulated in Kenya.

South Africa's proposed Regulation of Trusts Bill, 2026 introduces a substantially more developed regulatory framework that moves trust administration towards a world where good governance must be demonstrable rather than assumed. The Bill signals a fundamental shift from viewing trusts merely as legal structures to recognizing them as governance arrangements requiring careful documentation, investment oversight, and succession planning that extends beyond the original founders.

Cohabitation in Nigeria does not automatically give unmarried couples the same legal rights as married couples. Nigerian law does not currently provide a comprehensive statutory framework governing the property and financial rights of couples who live together without marrying.