Arbitrator in Africa Under the OHADA Rules
Dr. Mahutodji Jimmy Vital Kodo is an Attorney and Member of the Hauts-de-Seine Bar Association in France, an independent arbitrator, and a leading OHADA expert and practitioner with over fifteen years of experience. In addition to his traditional litigation and arbitration practice before the courts in France, he has been appointed arbitrator by African States in investment disputes and regularly represents parties in complex litigation and arbitration proceedings as well as appeals before the Common Court of Justice and Arbitration (CCJA), the Court of Final Appeal for the seventeen African States Parties to the OHADA Treaty. A bilingual (English and French) practitioner, he obtained a master’s degree in business law from the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin, an L.L.M. in corporate law from the University of Lille, and a Ph.D. summa cum laude in African business law (OHADA) from the University of Paris-Est Créteil, France. The Ph.D. thesis of Dr. Kodo, which was published in 2010, constitutes the only comprehensive study of published OHADA jurisprudence and has contributed to the development of the Treatise on OHADA (Code Pratique Francis Lefebvre OHADA : Traité, Actes uniformes et Règlements annotés) published by Editions Francis Lefebvre since 2013, and of which Dr. Kodo is the director since 2016.
Public Policy and its Impact on the Enforcements of Awards