JAW 2026 | CDH at the heart of Africa's arbitration conversation

The week opened with history

Four former African Heads of State — HE Joaquim Alberto Chissano, HE Uhuru Kenyatta, HE Goodluck Jonathan, and HE Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — signed a Letter of Understanding with AFSA, establishing the Africa Forum Conflict Resolution Centre (AFCRC). Combining the moral authority of 37 former African presidents with AFSA's institutional infrastructure, and centred on training African women as high-level mediators, the signing set the tone for everything that followed: African-led solutions are not aspirational. They are being built now.

Session 1 | BRICS, AfCFTA & the Fading Rules-Based Order

5 May 2026

CDH's first session brought together practitioners from Brazil, China, Russia, and Africa to interrogate what the reshaping of the traditional rules-based order means — in practice — for arbitration.

Jackwell Feris, Director and Sector Head: Industrials, Manufacturing and Trade at CDH, moderated the session and set the intellectual architecture of the discussion from the outset. He was direct: "This session is not about the collapse of the rules-based order. It is about understanding what it has become, and what that means for every single practitioner." His framing identified the real drivers reshaping arbitration — the weaponisation of tariffs, the paralysis of multilateral institutions, the rise of "lawfare", and sanctions-driven payment bifurcation — and tied each to the concrete choices practitioners face: how contracts are drafted, how disputes are managed, and where arbitration is seated.

Brent Williams, Chief Executive Office of CDH, was CDH's panellist voice in the session — operating deliberately in the strategic and institutional lane. His contribution centred on what geopolitical fragmentation looks like at boardroom level for clients, and what that demands of legal advisers. On AfCFTA, he was measured but clear: the agreement has the potential to transform intra-African trade, but its success depends heavily on building credible, accessible dispute resolution mechanisms — something the continent is still working to consolidate.

The international panellists deepened the picture considerably. Bruno Barata (Senior Partner, BCDM Law, Brazil) examined Latin American arbitration dynamics and the growing appeal — and limitations — of regional legal cooperation within BRICS-Plus. Arthur Ma (Partner, DaHui Lawyers, China) addressed China's institutional reforms bringing its arbitration framework closer to international standards, and flagged a significant practical development: China's recent zero-tariff policy for 53 African countries. "Once tariff barriers are removed, a huge amount of imports will occur — and with transactions come disputes." Stanislav Karandasov (Partner, Asari Legal, Russia) gave a frank account of how sanctions are redrawing the global arbitration map, with Russian parties increasingly turning to jurisdictions perceived as neutral — making enforceability, political alignment, and institutional independence central to arbitration strategy in a way they have never been before.

The session landed a core message, reported by Engineering News: arbitration is no longer simply a neutral, rules-driven mechanism. It is increasingly shaped by political realities and strategic considerations — and African practitioners need to be ahead of that shift, not reacting to it.

Session 2 | Critical Minerals, Energy Security & Strategic Supply Chains: Disputes in the New Geopolitical Battleground

6 May 2026

CDH's second session moved deliberately from the macro to the practical — from global trade architecture to the project sites, contract structures, and dispute rooms where the real consequences of fragmentation play out. Every panellist brought a distinct lens, and the session was all the richer for it.

Denise Durand, Director Dispute Resolution at CDH, moderated the session with precision — holding the structural thread and continuously anchoring each contribution to the session's throughline: trade triggers, investment terms, bankability, and dispute outcomes. The discipline of the moderation kept a technically complex discussion accessible and action-oriented throughout.

Jackwell Feris bridged the two sessions — drawing a direct line from the BRICS/AfCFTA macro themes of Day 1 into how those forces generate concrete disputes in critical minerals projects. He framed the central tension for African resource projects: the continent is being pulled faster by geopolitical and commercial forces than its legal architecture can always manage, and the choice of seat, governing law, and dispute mechanism has never carried more practical consequence.

Vivien Chaplin, Director and Sector Head: Minerals and Mining at CDH, brought the sector and value-chain lens. She positioned critical minerals not simply as a mining story but as a value-retention story — with beneficiation, downstream processing, and sovereign governance choices shaping commercial structuring from the outset and generating disputes when regulatory ambition outpaces infrastructure reality.

Clive Rumsey, Director and Sector Head: Construction and Engineering at CDH, translated those dynamics into project delivery — addressing the concrete sources of dispute in critical minerals infrastructure: EPC delay, cost escalation, change-in-law risk, force majeure in the context of shifting export policy, and the complex interface risk that arises when multi-jurisdiction logistics corridors span several parties and contracts.

Burton Meyer, Director Dispute Resolution at CDH, closed the session by pivoting from diagnosis to design — focusing on what effective dispute architecture actually requires in a critical minerals context: mechanisms capable of handling multi-contract, multi-party disputes; robust interim relief tools; and the conditions under which South Africa and Johannesburg can be a genuinely credible, well-used seat — not just a theoretical option.

Day 3 | ADR as Critical Infrastructure

7 May 2026 

CDH's presence carried through to the final day of JAW. Jackwell Feris moderated the opening plenary session, "ADR as Critical Infrastructure in Africa's Critical Mineral Value Retention for Sustainable Development" — alongside Justice David Unterhalter of the Supreme Court of Appeal, Kossi Toulassi (AUDA-NEPAD), and Advocate Davie Malungisa (Southern Africa Resource Watch). The central takeaway was unambiguous: dispute resolution must be designed into Africa's critical minerals value chain from inception, not retrofitted when projects are already in distress. ADR is not a legal convenience. It is strategic infrastructure, as foundational to Africa's value retention ambitions as the physical, financial, and regulatory architecture that surrounds it.  

A word from our Head of practice, Dispute Resolution

Reflecting on CDH's participation across the week, Rishaban Moodley, Practice Head for Dispute Resolution at CDH, offered this perspective:

"JAW 2026 confirmed what we at CDH have long believed — that Africa's dispute resolution infrastructure is not a peripheral concern, but a central pillar of the continent's economic future. For me personally, the BRICS conversation was particularly significant. The emergence of BRICS-Plus as a platform for alternative legal and economic cooperation is not a distant geopolitical abstraction — it is already reshaping where to resolve disputes. Africa cannot afford to be a passive recipient of that shift. We need to be building the institutions, the expertise, and the credibility to position ourselves as a preferred seat and a trusted partner in that evolving order. CDH came to JAW to contribute to that agenda — and we leave more committed than ever to helping build the architecture that makes it real." @Rishaban Moodley – has approved the statement.

 

CDH take on the week

The conversations at JAW 2026 were most powerful where they stayed practical and output-oriented — moving beyond policy abstraction toward named mechanisms, concrete design choices, and measurable institutional commitments. AFSA CEO Andile Nikani captured it well on the sidelines: "These events do for arbitral centres what little else can — they solidify their relevance in international dispute resolution. They say to the world: this is who we are, and this is what we are capable of doing."

The judicial panel reinforced the same message from a different direction: party autonomy in arbitration is not advisory — it is binding, and courts are expected to honour it.

A significant portion of disputes involving African parties are still being resolved in London and Paris. Building the confidence, capacity, and institutional credibility to change that is not a passive exercise. It requires exactly the kind of deliberate, practical, output-driven engagement that JAW — and CDH's participation in it — represents.

Africa does not need to wait for the global order to restabilise before building world-class dispute resolution infrastructure. The architecture is being built now.

CDH is proud to be part of that work — not as observers, but as architects.