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Utilizing detailed case studies from Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa, this title traces African constitutionalism from precolonial times to the present. It offers a new framework for understanding African constitutionalism and a range of practical proposals for its future development.

AbstractThis article examines the path of global constitutionalism and its encounter with cultural diversity in Africa. It situates the phenomenon of global constitutionalism in the late nineteenth century and traces some of its tectonic transformations since the inauguration of the liberal international order. Besides referring to the processes of and calls for the constitutionalization of the international legal regime and the emergence of global constitutional law, global constitutionalism played a constitutive role for constitutionalism in Africa. As constitutionalism in Africa is configured within a biosphere of global constitutionalism and cultural diversity, their dynamic interplay leads to the emergence of jurisgenerative constitutionalism, which is procedurally and normatively open to accommodate a plural conception of rights, justice and values. As a result, what is constitutionally permissible and what is not cannot simply be determined by an attachment to either global constitutionalism or cultural diversity. Rather, it is the interaction of global constitutionalism and cultural diversity in time and place that dictates what the constitutional practice or outcome should look like. By taking the women's rights jurisprudence related to customary and Islamic laws and the phenomenon of Shariacracy as themes of analysis, and Nigeria as a case study, this article explores how the emergence of jurisgenerative constitutionalism mediates global constitutionalism and cultural diversity in Africa. By bringing in the African experience, the article sheds some light on the range of theoretical and practical possibilities available to the emerging field of global constitutionalism.

This article examines the African experiment with federalism in light of classic federal theory with the objective of identifying and illuminating patterns of convergence and divergence and the consequences thereof. Classic federal theory offers explanations for the origin, formation, structures, and success and failure of federalism. This article, drawing from the experience of Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa, reveals that while federalism in Africa shares the forms, structures, and discursive practices of classic federal theory, its normative articulations and institutional frameworks are animated by syncretic configurations. As a result, federalism transforms its purpose, fundamental elements, and operations in Africa. As federalism follows new pathways in Africa, this article shows how its system of operation and standards of assessment take a similar course. Against the central ethos of classic federal theory, federalism in Africa manages to operate and, to the extent possible, deliver its purpose mainly without liberal constitutionalism. This article argues that if federalism has to ensure the practice of constitutional democracy in Africa then democratic values, human rights, and constitutional considerations should animate its normative and institutional underpinnings as in classic federal theory.