our story

MIssion

Achieving
sustainable
legal capacity
for Africa

The goal of the Facility is to remove asymmetric technical capacities and level the field of legal expertise among parties to litigation and negotiations. The Facility provides legal advice and capacity building to African countries on vulture fund litigation, complex commercial transactions and related sovereign transactions. Through all of its activities the Facility aims to build additional legal capacity on the African continent. The Facility is currently executing projects in the following three strategic pillars:

1.Advisory services.
2.Capacity Building & Knowledge Management.

In addition to the three strategic pillars listed above, the Facility also promotes cross-cutting issues including environmental awareness, gender mainstreaming, as well as participation of disabled, and compliance with good governance practices and standards, in all activities it supports.

Advisory services

The Facility provides high-quality legal advisory services to African Governments in the structuring and negotiation of complex commercial transactions and investment agreements, in the areas of natural resources and extractive industries, investment agreements, and Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), including large-scale infrastructure and other related complex commercial and business transactions, as well as sovereign debt transaction. The assistance is aimed at removing the imbalance between Governments and investors. The Facility seeks to strengthen the legal expertise and negotiation capacities of African governments to help them protect and assert their sovereign rights by promoting the negotiation and conclusion of agreements that are sustainable and maximize their economic development. The ALSF focuses its assistance in the following sectors:
1. Extractives (mining, oil & gas) and Natural Resources;
2. Infrastructure and Public-Private Partnerships (power, transport (ports airports, highways, railways, etc.), water & sanitation, etc.);
3. Sovereign Debt transactions (debt issuances and related transactions, debt management, debt restructuring or refinancing and commercial creditor litigation (vulture funds);
4. Other complex commercial transactions.



Capacity Building & Knowledge Management

The Facility provides Capacity Building to national lawyers in African countries. Recognizing that not enough African lawyers have acquired the necessary experience and exposure to advise on complex commercial transactions and vulture fund litigation, the Facility is attempting to address that need by focusing on developing legal capacity across the continent. A key pillar of the Facility is to require international law firms that provide legal services to member countries to transfer skills to their national counterparts.

By identifying and establishing a body of African lawyers and law firms that are able to defend litigation by creditors and lead negotiations for Governments on complex commercial transactions, the Facility builds sustainable legal expertise e. The ALSF also relies on building partnerships with sub-regional and continental bodies that bring together lawyers to continue with coordinating similar activities.

The ALSF also aims at promoting the development of international arbitration. Its capacity building interventions in this area deeply align with the ALSF’s objectives of advocating for arbitration in Africa, creating awareness campaigns to advance the use of arbitration, and building relevant capacities of RMCs on arbitration.

The ALSF develops, manages, and disseminates relevant knowledge products, including academic and legal materials, model documents, and other transaction-facilitation tools, legal hotlines, databases, publications, and training curricula & platforms.