Private International Law Practice in Uganda: An Analysis of the Supreme Court Decision in Bank of Uganda v Transroad Limited Civil Appeal No. 3 of 1997

Abstract

Private international Law has stagnated in Africa largely because Africa has largely been excluded from, and not actively engaged with, many of the contexts in which the subject’s development has been promoted in other jurisdictions. As opposed to Public International Law which is the law of the political system of nation-states, it provides a barometer for measuring the extent to which a country’s legal system engages with other legal systems -Richard Fripong Oppong (2015).According to McKeever (2006) it is a distinct and self-contained system of law, independent of the national systems with which it interacts, and deals with relations which they do not effectively govern. Private International law also known as conflict of laws deals with private relations between differing legal jurisdictions and persons both natural and legal (Briggs (2008)). As such, it concerns itself with questions of choice of laws; choice of jurisdiction; harmonization of the laws, conflict resolution; drafting of the contracts especially in commercial transactions.As a matter of great importance, in an international commercial relationship, legal battles of international character wherein issues of which country’s court should have jurisdiction to try the dispute; which country’s laws should be applied to resolve the dispute; and whether any foreign judgment obtained abroad might be enforceable in the concerned country are bound to arise and these will call for complex analysis of Private International laws of various jurisdictions to enable parties settle their differences.This paper attempts to examine the extent to which private international law is applicable to commercial transactions in Uganda with specific emphasis on the decided case of Bank of Uganda v Transroad Ltd.