Book Launch Hosted by SAIFAC and the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights: A Theory of African Constitutionalism by Dr. Berihun Gebeye
DATE: 3 November 2021
TIME: 15h30—17h30 South African time (GMT+2)
VENUE: Online Seminar Zoom
RSVP: Please RSVP to naomi@saifac.org.za to register and for the Zoom link
About the author
Dr. Berihun Gebeye is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. Previously, Dr. Gebeye has been a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Göttingen and a Visiting Scholar at the Columbia Law School, the Center for Socio-Legal Studies of the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity; a Global Teaching Fellow at the University of Yangon (Myanmar), a Lecturer at Jigjiga University Law School (Ethiopia), and a Visiting Professor at the Central European University. Dr. Gebeye holds degrees in law, human rights, and comparative constitutional law and has extensively published in these fields with a focus on Africa.
Discussants (Chaired by Prof Kate O’Regan):
Dr. Zim Nwokora (Senior Lecturer in Politics and Policy Studies at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia)
Prof Sindiso Mnisi Weeks (Associate Professor of Law and Society in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Adjunct Associate Professor in Public Law at the University of Cape Town)
Dr. Adem Abebe (Program Officer in the Constitution Building Program of International IDEA)
About the book:
A Theory of African Constitutionalism asks and seeks to answer why we need a new theoretical framework for African constitutionalism and how this could offer us better theoretical and practical tools with which to understand, improve, and assess African constitutionalism on its own terms. By locating constitutional studies in Africa within the experiences, interactions, and contestations of power and governance beginning in precolonial times, the book presents the development and transformation of African constitutional systems across time and place, along with the attendant constitutional designs and practices ranging from the nature and operation of the African state to its vertical and horizontal government structures, to its constitutional rights regime. This title offers both a theoretically and comparatively rich, historically and contextually informed, and temporally and spatially extensive account of the nature, travails, and incremental successes of African constitutionalism with detailed case studies from Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa. 'A Theory of African Constitutionalism' provides scholars, policymakers, governments, and constitution builders in Africa and beyond with new insights for reimagining the purpose, substance, and scope of constitutions and constitutionalism.