Disclaimer While every effort has been made to ensure that the tables and descriptions of the laws in African countries are accurate and up to date, very complex provisions have been simplified. Readers should not treat them as definitive nor accord them the status of legal advice. Many provisions are subject to interpretation, and difficult to represent in tabular form. In this edition, the laws and tables are updated to the end of December 2015. In the tables, the final column referencing the legal source gives the original date of the law currently in force, with the date of the latest amendment in brackets. vii