ABSTRACT
This chapter describes African Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) have been weak in leveraging and imposing obligations on investors and tend to favour foreign investors without addressing questions of economic sustainability for the continent. South Africa has concluded BITs with 16 African countries. All the BITs adopt an asset based definition of investment and contain the traditional investor and investment protections of most favoured nation, national treatment standards as well as fair and equitable treatment of investors. Nigeria currently has 29 BITs and five of these are with African countries. Nigeria’s BIT framework provides for an asset based definition of investment and combines promotion and protection objectives. Africa’s economy is growing significantly. There is an increase in political stability across the majority of states and there is a modest increase in the diversification in state economies, which bodes well for economic growth.
