No one is coming to save you — A quest for Africanizing Business and Human Rights

This article examines the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (Directive) and its proposed amendment, especially from a Third World view. It establishes that, practically, the Directive has a limited value for Africans because it cannot stop corporate human rights abuses and economic exploitation in Africa. In contrast, the Directive entrenches neocolonial norms in the Business and Human Rights (BHR) field. This article also argues that it is futile for Third World Peoples to look to international law, given its capitalist history and the growing EU dominance in the BHR treaty discussions. Instead of looking to Europe or international law to save Africans from corporate abuses and economic exploitation, African states must look inward to create subsidiary norms that challenge and resist neocolonialism in the BHR field. To achieve this, it discusses the normative agency of the African Union in leading an Africanization agenda.