The Internationalisation of African Customary Law Arbitration

Abstract

chiefdoms at different levels of political and economic development, 1 had their indigenous ways of settling economic and social disputes. They had well-established customary laws that governed their lives and business, providing guidance in both domestic and inter-kingdom or inter-chiefdom affairs in peace and in war. Amongst the prominently developing areas of that law were such dispute resolution mechanisms as litigation, arbitration and the ADRs such as mediation, conciliation and negotiation. Arbitration and the ADRs were certainly not called these English names and in several places may not even have had names distinguishing one from the other. Their characteristics (such as between arbitration and conciliation) were also no doubt, overlapping. That is why those trained in the British and other European or American systems have often had diffi culties distinguishing between them. 2 Those facts notwithstanding, Arbitration and the ADRs were mostly favoured and in vibrant employment by all segments of the society. They much more engendered a peaceful settlement of disputes and preservation of the pre-dispute cordial social or business relationships than litigation. The preference for peaceful or amicable settlement of disputes and restoration of pre-dispute cordiality has always been a part of African culture stemming from the deep-seated African principle of everyone being his brother’s keeper. In the colonisation process, each African kingdom or chiefdom was wholly or partly dismantled for the emerging colony to take root, with the result that