Corporate purpose and governance in Africa: French-influenced OHADA law, local norms, and heterodox pluralism

This article examines corporate governance in Africa and its significance for corporate repurposing. It focuses on the French-inspired Organisation for the Harmonisation of Business Law in Africa (OHADA), which unites seventeen African states under a single corporate law jurisdiction. The article explores how the interpretation and practice of this legal system can be integrated with or influenced by national sectoral laws and cultural norms. The result is the central claim that corporate purpose in Africa reflects a heterodox pluralism. Corporate membership is not tethered to shareholding only, but the workforce and the neighbourhood too. Similarly, corporate legitimacy is not merely a function of formal legal arrangements; it equally derives from broader society. The governance of corporations in Africa nevertheless falls short of reflecting these imperatives for pluralism, with the danger of a prevailing shareholder primacy norm continuing its unencumbered de facto reign and reducing African stakeholderism to comparative impotence.