To regulate and facilitate are the main functions of legal rules. These purposes are achieved by a harmonised legal system by which the law becomes identical in numerous jurisdictions. The process to unify the law of sale internationally started in the 1920s and culminated, in 1988, in the implementation of the CISG. This Convention intends to provide clarity for most international sales transactions by regulating the formation of contracts, and the rights and obligations of the seller and the buyer resulting from the contract. The CISG has these days enjoyed much ratification and influenced a number of legislation reforms worldwide. Despite the role it played during the drafting process of the CISG, the DRC has not yet ratified it. Instead, the country continued to rely, until recently, on colonial legislations which had become out-dated, and inadequate to meet modern international sales contracts requirements. The situation appears to have been improved a year ago as the effect of the adoption of OHADA law whose Commercial Act is largely inspired by the CISG. Because the introduction of OHADA law in the DRC is very recent, this study intends to assess the current state of Congolese sales law by comparing it with the CISG and South African law, which is non-CISG but modernised. The comparative study aims at establishing whether current Congolese law, as amended by OHADA law, is sufficient or has shortcomings; if it has some, it aims to identify those shortcomings, and make suggestions for their improvements. After discussion, it has been discovered that the ratification of OHADA law has significantly improved Congolese domestic sales law. Given that there remain certain unresolved shortcomings in Congolese international sales law, however, the study ends by a proposal for the accession of the DRC to the CISG in order to fill them. / Mercantile Law / LLD

To regulate and facilitate are the main functions of legal rules. These purposes are achieved by a harmonised legal system by which the law becomes identical in numerous jurisdictions. The process to unify the law of sale internationally started in the 1920s and culminated, in 1988, in the implementation of the CISG. This Convention intends to provide clarity for most international sales transactions by regulating the formation of contracts, and the rights and obligations of the seller and the buyer resulting from the contract. The CISG has these days enjoyed much ratification and influenced a number of legislation reforms worldwide. Despite the role it played during the drafting process of the CISG, the DRC has not yet ratified it. Instead, the country continued to rely, until recently, on colonial legislations which had become out-dated, and inadequate to meet modern international sales contracts requirements. The situation appears to have been improved a year ago as the effect of the adoption of OHADA law whose Commercial Act is largely inspired by the CISG. Because the introduction of OHADA law in the DRC is very recent, this study intends to assess the current state of Congolese sales law by comparing it with the CISG and South African law, which is non-CISG but modernised. The comparative study aims at establishing whether current Congolese law, as amended by OHADA law, is sufficient or has shortcomings; if it has some, it aims to identify those shortcomings, and make suggestions for their improvements. After discussion, it has been discovered that the ratification of OHADA law has significantly improved Congolese domestic sales law. Given that there remain certain unresolved shortcomings in Congolese international sales law, however, the study ends by a proposal for the accession of the DRC to the CISG in order to fill them. / Mercantile Law / LL. D.

It is universally acknowledged that international trade and cooperation have become key drivers of SMEs. Indeed, the success of SMEs in the sales sector depends upon their capacity to conquer the foreign market and compete with larger companies. Many SMEs today, in particular those in Central and West Africa, are very much aware of this reality. However, because of differences between domestic laws and their maladjustment, many African SMEs still struggle to enter the international market and compete with larger companies. It is therefore obvious that any SMEs that want to succeed in international commerce today will be called upon to confront different regulations, whether domestic, regional or international, which are often shaped according to the realities and expectations of a particular environment. The challenge today is to regulate and harmonise these different legal systems, in order to render the law identical in numerous jurisdictions. This process of unifying the law internationally, in particular the law of sale, started in 1920 and culminated in 1988, with the implementation of the CISG. This Convention, which has become the primary law for international sales contracts, endeavours to deal with this problem of differences in law between states on a global scale, by attempting to achieve a synthesis between different legislations, such as civil law, common law, socialist law, and the law regarding industrialised and Third World countries. Even though the CISG appears to be a compromise between different legal systems, the fact remains that it is not yet applicable in many countries, especially those in Central and West Africa, which are mostly still ruled by domestic and regional law, namely the OHADA. The purpose of this study is to attempt to analyse and compare the OHADA’s Uniform Act Relating to Commercial Law to the CISG, in order to identify similarities and differences between the two, and to determine, with regard to the operating mode and structure of SMEs in West and Central Africa, which one of the two legislations is more appropriate. / Private Law / LL. M.