NICArb 40th Anniversary Conference and Investiture

Theme: Building a Culture of Arbitration and Sustainable Institutions in West Africa
Introduction to the Conference:
The Culture of Arbitration can be viewed in two ways. First, there is the notion of a general legal
culture affecting Arbitration, which is usually taken to mean those aspects of national culture that
find expression in the legal system, for example, the Japanese legal culture, the French legal
culture and the American legal culture. A second notion of culture has to do with shared norms
and expectations produced by legal actors. Culture in this context is produced by actors (a
community of Arbitral professionals with common training and expertise) engaged in repeated
interaction over time.
This 40th Anniversary and conference seeks to engage these two perspectives of culture in
building Arbitral institutions, explore possibilities for strengthening the nexus between culture and
institutions in building Arbitral practices and procedures in West Africa, and engage strategies for
practitioners and policymakers in West Africa to develop an identifiable Arbitration (and ADR)
practice. It is a multi-stakeholder forum where industry leaders and policy makers will converge
to discuss and shape the future of Arbitration (and ADR) in West Africa.