African Legal Support Facility

The African Legal Support Facility is an international organization hosted by the African Development Bank in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. It was established on 22 December 2008 by the African Development Bank Group, at the request of African countries, and became operational in 2010.

Since 2003, African Ministers of Finance had been calling for the establishment of an institution that would provide legal assistance to African States, particularly, Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs), to meet the challenge of litigations with creditors (especially vulture funds) and the negotiation of complex commercial contracts. The ALSF was therefore established to provide legal and technical capacity to African countries.

The ALSF’s unique mandate focuses on providing practical, “hands-on” support during the negotiation of contractual arrangements between governments and investors. The ALSF empowers governments with the necessary knowledge and resources to ensure balanced, fair and equitable outcomes, to ultimately improve good governance and environmental and social stewardship.

Legal Advisory Services: The ALSF provides advisory services to African governments in the structuring and negotiation of complex commercial transactions relating to extractives and natural resources, infrastructure, public-private partnerships, power and the sovereign debt sectors to ensure that African countries benefit from transactions that are fair and equitable and contribute to their sustainable development.

Capacity Building: The ALSF builds the capacity of African lawyers and government officials to enable them to negotiate complex commercial transactions. In this regard, the ALSF develops training programs and platforms, including legal hotlines. In 2017 the ALSF launched the ALSF Virtual Academy, a portal dedicated to continuing training: https://alsf.academy/

Creditor Litigation: The ALSF provides legal assistance to African governments in creditor negotiations and defense against creditor litigation, particularly by vulture funds.

Knowledge Management: The Facility provides assistance related to the development, collection and management of knowledge, including law manuals, databases of case law, legislation, contracts, and transaction facilitation tools, including standard documents and template agreements.

The Facility mainly operates in 5 sectors :

Extractives and natural resources: mining, petroleum upstream, including exploration & production, agriculture, forestry, fisheries & blue economy.	Infrastructure & Public-Private Partnerships (PPP): dry ports, social infrastructures, transportation, water & sanitation, and other infrastructure, under the PPP model.	Energy: power generation, infrastructure, distribution and transmission, hydrogen, petroleum midstream and downstream
Sovereign debt	Investment Treaties & Dispute Resolution

Cross-cutting themes

Promoting Gender Equality for Inclusive Growth: Gender equality and women's empowerment are an integral part of the Sustainable Development Goals and are values practised by the ALSF. The ALSF Medium-Term Strategy (2018-2022) provides a binding framework for promoting gender equality at two levels. The Facility's projects and interventions integrate gender considerations. Furthermore, the Facility strives to ensure gender parity at all levels (management and support services).

Encouraging environmental sustainability to support inclusive development: The ALSF considers environmental and social concerns in its operations in order to support socially sustainable and inclusive economic growth in Africa. Specifically, the Facility encourages the integration of environmental considerations into negotiated contracts, including best practices and other measures, to improve natural resource management and environmental protection.

Good governance: The ALSF ensures compliance with the rule of law, fairness, transparency and good governance in all its interventions in member countries.

Strengthening the ALSF's commitment to transitioning states: The ALSF provides support to African states classified by the African Development Bank as transition or fragile states and thus eligible for the African Development Fund's aid window via the Transition Support Facility. These states are more vulnerable to creditor litigation and more exposed to the risk of entering into unfair investment and trade agreements. In 2021, the ALSF approved $3 million to support 14 operations in transitioning states. These interventions will mainly provide legal advisory services and build capacity in Burundi, the Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, The Gambia, and Zimbabwe.

ALSF Membership

Membership of the ALSF is open to states and international organizations. At the end of 2021, the Facility had 60 members, including 53 countries (including five non-African countries) and seven international organizations.

Among the 48 African member countries, 26 have signed and ratified the ALSF Agreement; 22 have signed but not ratified it, while 6 have neither signed nor ratified it.

Beneficiaries of the ALSF

All African countries are eligible for ALSF assistance.

Donors and partners of the ALSF

The African Development Bank is the leading donor of the ALSF. The Facility is also funded by eight international organizations and has partnered with over 36 bilateral and multilateral partners as well as capacity building institutions to optimize its support to African countries.

Non-financial technical partners

The ALSF has many non-financial technical partners, such as international organizations, research and study centers, universities, legal institutions, or stakeholders in the mining, transport, energy, water and natural resources sectors.

The ALSF results

In 2021, the ALSF approved 33 new projects amounting to $6.8 million. These operations comprised: 17 advisory services / litigation projects; and 16 capacity building and knowledge management projects. Over the same period, the ALSF committed over $11 million for its interventions in the extractives and natural resources, power, infrastructure and public-private partnership and sovereign debt sectors. The ALSF also improved its operational effectiveness, knowledge capability, and business processes to enhance its service delivery to its clients. Since it began operations in 2010, the ALSF has provided about $112 million in legal support for more than 260 projects in 45 African countries.

In 2021, the ALSF facilitated government savings in underlying transactions worth $14.8 billion, and trained 2,300 African lawyers and government officials.

Extension of the term of the ALSF

In 2021, the Governing Council of the ALSF extended the term of the ALSF for a further 14 years from 2023 to 2036. With the extension of its term, the ALSF will focus on deepening the impact of its support, and enhance the capacity of African countries to address contemporary and emerging issues such as Covid-19, climate change, illicit financial flows, and digitalization, and to strengthen African countries’ resilience against future crises.

Prizes awarded to the ALSF

The ALSF was recognized as the Best Legal Department of the Year (Large teams’ category) at the 2018 African Legal Awards held in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Facility also received special mention for its support to African governments in negotiating investment-related transactions essential for their economic development at the same event.

Earlier in 2018, during the African Energy Forum, the ALSF was distinguished as an innovative tool impacting energy development in Africa.