CRCICA was recognized in June 2022 by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in an Assessment Report of Arbitration Centre in Egypt (CRCICA). The purpose of the report was to provide an update of the first AfDB Report on Arbitration Centres in Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt and Mauritius referring to CRCICA in 2014. The AfDB 2014 Report recognized “CRCICA as one of the best arbitration centres in the African continent and elsewhere”. The AfDB 2022 Report referred to the same quote of the AfDB 2014 Report and further provided that “Our assessment in our previous 2014 report was that the CRCICA was one of the best arbitration centres across the African continent and could be recommended for use by parties from both the African continent and elsewhere. Six years later, we stand by that assessment”.
The report is divided in five main sections. A first section analyzes the CRCICA’s establishment, organization, and activities. The second section focuses on the rules of arbitration and their application in practice. The third section specifically addresses how the Centre dealt with the recent Covid-19 pandemic. A fourth section analyzes the arbitration law and the legal environment in Egypt, with particular emphasis on setting aside and enforcement proceedings, as well as the State Courts’ general approach to arbitration. The conclusion of the report confirmed CRCICA’s suitability for the AfDB’s purposes criteria; inter alia, modern set of rules comparable to the standard guaranteed by modern arbitration rules, arbitration friendly environment at the seat of the Centre, parties are free to choose the place of arbitration and arbitrators, good language skills (French and English), no impediment to enforcement and neutral venue requirement.
The AfDB 2022 Report considered CRCICA to have fulfilled the criteria of the autonomy of parties to select arbitrators, where it mentioned that “The parties are not bound by a specific list. If the arbitrators are to be appointed by the Centre, then they must be chosen from the panel of arbitrators of CRCICA.”
It is worth noting that the report outlined the views of practitioners and representatives of CRCICA regarding the administration capacity of Dr Ismail Selim since his appointment as Director to increase the level of its services and expand its reach beyond its traditional area of influence in Egypt and the Middle East.
