At the 18th African Human Rights Moot Court Competition recently hosted by the University of Lagos, Nigeria, the Rhodes University team proved their good standing among African universities.

Consisting of two final year law students, Christopher McConnachie and Roxanne Francis-Pope, the Rhodes team were a force to be reckoned with.

McConnachie took home best individual oralist in the Anglophone category. This placed him first out of approximately 98 students. He was followed by Elizabeth Armstrong of the University of Cape Town and Precious Eriamiatoe of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, in second and third place respectively.

Competing with approximately 49 teams, the Rhodes team ranked fifth overall in the Anglophone category with an average score of 78.01%. The University of Cape Town obtained first position with an average score of 82.50% followed by the University of Ghana in second place with 80,24%, the University of KwaZulu-Natal(79.11%) coming third and Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria (78.55%) in fourth.

The African Human Rights Moot Court Competition is the largest gathering of African law students and lecturers on the African continent. It provides law students with a unique opportunity to interact with top students from approximately 80 universities across the continent.

Participants compete by arguing topical issues in African human rights law based on a hypothetical case study. This inspires students to think critically about international human rights matters in Africa.

Each university is invited to send a faculty representative who has worked in the field of human rights and whose role is to give guidance to the university team on the drafting of their argument and litigation skills. This role is confined to assisting with necessary legal issues which ensures that the work produced by the students remains their own. Once at the competition, the faculty representatives also serve as judges in the preliminary rounds.

The Rhodes law faculty representative accompanying the team this year was Ms Mutsa Mangezi, a junior lecturer in Clinical Law.The Rhodes team were able to travel to Lagos with sponsorship from Schindlers Attorneys.