I specialize in finance, development, human rights, and natural resources, with a heavy emphasis on Africa. My work on (international) finance, corporate law and contracts sits at the interface of law and economics.
Since 2008, I have presented lectures at more than 50 conferences at many universities and institutions, including North-West University (South Africa), Yale University (USA), the African Union, the University of Cambridge, and Université de Montréal (Canada).
I have written extensively in my areas of specialization. Indeed, my research has been cited more than 100 times by various scholars and organizations, and it has been published in a number of law reviews, including Israel Law Review, American University International Law Review, and Peking University Journal of Legal Studies.
EDUCATION
A fluent speaker of English and French, I was educated at the University of Namibia, Université de Montréal and Cornell University, where I earned both my master’s and doctoral degrees in law.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Finance, law and economics, contracts, natural resources, human rights
Public Finance and Debt Crises in Southern Africa: A Push for Central Banks over Parliaments Dunia Zongwe Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal, 2024 In the soaring symphony of fiscal policy in Southern Africa, this paper orchestrates a new tune, proposing that central banks, not parliaments, should take the lead role in managing and taming sovereign debt. This proposal reacts to the adoption by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) of the Public Finance Management Model Law on July 14th last year – a law that empowers SADC parliaments, especially their public accounts committees (PACs), to oversee governments’ management of public debts. Among other things, this model law on public finance management (PFM) provides for debt ceilings and the steering of public debts towards SADC voluntary debt target of 50% of gross domestic product (GDP). Drawing on law and economics, this paper criticizes SADC’s decision to empower parliaments to tame sovereign debts as hopelessly naïve because they lack the incentives to do so. Instead, this paper proposes that SADC reallocates to central banks the heavy responsibility to act as stewards of sovereign debt management because the 2009 SADC Central Bank Model Law and the municipal laws that domesticated it have entrenched the independence of central banks from external interference and political pressure. In a region that houses the world’s two most unequal societies, South Africa and Namibia, parliaments will most probably not sacrifice their electability in order to rein in public finances and sovereign debt. The world’s first-ever model community law on PFM, the SADC PFM Model Law affords policymakers and scholars a golden opportunity to rekindle the debate on sovereign debts in a region where economies and public finances have been ravaged by low-growth or recession since the mid-2010s, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine War, high inflation, and the cost-of-living crisis.
Namibia Dunia P Zongwe Elgar Encyclopedia of Crime and Criminal Justice Volume 1 4, 2024
THE ECONOMICS OF REPAIR: FIXING PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE BY ACTIVATING THE RIGHT TO REPAIR IN INDIA International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice, 2023
Nobody can really afford legal services: The price of justice in Namibia D. Zongwe Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal, 2021 Nobody (except for the privileged few) can afford legal services in Namibia. In the light of this dawning awareness, how should the government and other stakeholders design the legal profession so that the greatest number of Namibians can access legal services and, ultimately, justice while preserving the profession's financial viability? The predominantly economic nature of this question means that its solutions lie less in the field of law than in the field of economics. Thus, this article adopts a methodology that reflects that insight. As a primary purpose, this article works towards solving the high cost of legal services in Namibia. It utilises a literature-review methodology that searches the scholarship on the legal profession for practical, down-to-earth solutions put forward in other countries to take the edge off the prohibitive cost of legal services. The article mainly finds that, if structured as a compulsory salary deduction, legal insurance promises the greatest positive impact on costs. And it concludes that the optimal solutions should consist of measures aimed at heightening competition in the legal profession and measures that broaden cost-sharing in providing legal assistance to the public. The article argues that competition can be effectively increased by lubricating the flow of information about prices and services, and by having more public entities bear the burden of expanding the system of legal assistance.
The stories african lawyers could tell when analysing legal issues: Lessons for social sciences teachers D. Zongwe Hts Teologiese Studies Theological Studies, 2021 Activists and academics have clamoured for the decolonisation of knowledge, including law. But, unfortunately hardly anyone has put forth strategies for how faculties should decolonise the law. A number of jurists have underscored the necessity to draw on customary laws and traditional values. Still, the #RhodesMustFall movement has, for the most part, been loud on the outcomes, but quiet on the methodologies. Joining the conversation on the decolonisation of epistemologies, this article contributes to the ongoing efforts to sanitise the law by proposing to revive African oral storytelling cultures as a way to analyse the questions of law facing society. To live up to this task, this article adopts decolonial theory and, through stylised examples, illustrates how lawyers and social scientists in Africa can utilise storytelling to contextualise, (de)construct, and comprehend those questions. This article assumes that lawyers can use African storytelling alongside the prevailing doctrinal method. That method, relaying the coloniality of law and captured by the acronym IRAC (issue(s), rules, application, and conclusion), trains students to approach conflict in society through a highly abstract and decontextualised problem-solving model. Lately, some (Western) social scientists have (re)discovered the practicality of storytelling in presenting analysis and research. However, in African oral traditions, stories worked differently from the manner in which those scientists employ them. African storytelling played a leading role, not only in conveying collective wisdom and social memory from one generation to the next, but also as a medium through which communities transmit the values that hold them together.Contribution: This article adds to the scholarship on storytelling and narratology by showing how educators can utilise stories to analyse legal questions. That rich scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences has so far not taken seriously the possibility of using stories to analyse research problems. Instead, scholars focus on storytelling mainly as a way of presenting science, not as an analytical tool. This article bridges that gap and demonstrates the analytical value of storytelling.
The Dangers of Transplanting Transformative Constitutionalism into Namibia Global Jurisprudential Apartheid in the Twenty First Century Universalism and Particularism in International Law, 2021
Introduction D. Zongwe African Studies Review, 2012
GRANT DETAILS
I received several merit scholarships and awards, notably a scholarship from the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL) in March 2018, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC, South Africa) Certificate of Excellence for Best Presenter (2nd Runner Up) in 2016, the Cornell Institute for African Development fellowship in 2007, the LSN Prize for Best LL.B. Student in 2007, and the University of Namibia Vice-Chancellor’s Medal (twice). I was also offered a foreign clerkship at the South African Constitutional Court in 2007.
CONSULTANCY
As a consultant, I have done work for The World Bank since 2013. I have also carried out consulting projects for such clients as the European Union (Domac); UNESCO; Oxford University Press (International Law in Domestic Courts), and the Law Society of Namibia (LSN).
