Towards Effective Court- Annexed Mediation on Commercial Disputes in Zanzibar

Abstract

Commercial activities in Zanzibar are developing every day. This development, however, contributes to the rise of disputes among its key players such as sellers, buyers, suppliers and consumers of goods or services. To ensure the commercial disputes are resolved effectively and speedily the government of Zanzibar has established a commercial court division at the High Court level to settle commercial disputes. One of the procedures of handling commercial disputes in commercial court is through court-annexed mediation. Thus, this paper examines the existing law governing the court-annexed mediation in Zanzibar as a way to find how far it can help to solve commercial disputes effectively without engaging in litigation. The methodology adopted in this paper based on the content analysis of legislations, decided cases, leading textbooks and journal articles. The study also uses a comparative method where necessary to address the study in question. The paper proposes some measures for improving existing court-annexed mediation in Zanzibar such as; amendment of Civil Procedure Decree, making court-annexed mediation compulsory, mediation at subordinate courts and public awareness on the court-annexed mediation.