Sponsored briefing: Piloting maritime law in Egypt

Hisham Eldib and Nada Eldib of Eldib Advocates on how the firm’s core values and network of offices align with Africa’s ever-growing infrastructure

We would like to take this opportunity to express our firm’s keenness in co-operating with Legal Business magazine and being recognised among other esteemed law firms as well as the maritime and transport society in Africa. Eldib Advocates was established in 1875; we are a full-service law firm operating across Egypt and regionally with four offices nationally, in Alexandria, Cairo, Port Said and Suez, and three regional desks, covering Libya, Sudan and Saudi Arabia. Being a player in the legal field for over 145 years, our experience spans beyond local market industries to those of international markets, rendering legal services to a wide range of national and multinational corporations; in addition, to having an established network of affiliates across Africa, the Middle East and further worldwide. Our mission is to deliver innovative business solutions and result-oriented counsel to our clients existing at all stages. We always aim to effectively articulate our clients’ options and the risks involved in any venture and hope to guide them to making the most appropriate decisions to secure themselves and their businesses.

Eldib Advocates’ guiding values are: Traditions of Innovation, Firm-Wide Excellence, Commitment to Trusted Partnership and Sharing Success. Having historical and current strong ties to the transport, logistics and maritime industry, the current chapter of our firm’s longstanding active role is to further develop a long-expected co-operation within our continent with respect to the legal and trade fields. With a new age ahead, we work on balancing and maintaining traditions, while keeping up with the times and embracing innovative ideas, encouraging entrepreneurial spirit, innovative thought and the development of forward-thinking client-oriented solutions.

With ‘Traditions of Innovation’ being one of our four core values, we strive to harmonise our respect for tradition and the law, yet we recognise the need for continual modernisation, forward planning and creative thinking. As such, we believe that Egypt’s ties and role in Africa, although geographically being in the northern east corner of Africa, have suffered due to the lack of effort being made on a macro-level to link the continent; accordingly, it is long overdue for progressive steps to be taken in this regard. Appropriately, our firm’s commercial arm, Eldib Pandi, has established a branch in Sudan as a first step towards really immersing ourselves in Africa. We plan to expand further in the continent, in line with Egypt’s vision, as evident in the construction of a highway linking Alexandria to Cape Town, South Africa by 2024, in an effort to expand trade and trade routes across the African continent, our commitment to the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) and our longstanding active roll with COMESA.

Furthermore, Egypt continues to develop energy, road and rail links with its neighbours and beyond; the current administration’s initiative to become a regional transit hub and further, to become a central portal of global trade, the transport sector is being heavily invested in, with the aim to of achieving internationally recognised trade benchmarks, both foreign and local investment have been a vital factor in the success of this plan. This link with our neighbours is further enhanced by the newly awarded contract for Siemens Egypt to build two grid stabilisation stations in Sudan with the aim to assist feeding cross-border electric power to Egypt as part of the Egypt-Sudan Electric Interconnection Project. With Egypt investing almost $30m in order to supply and install power compensators in the station thus boosting the link’s capacity to 300 MW.

Our firm’s value of ‘Commitment to Trusted Partnership’ aligns with such expansion and capitalisation of this ever-growing progress. Having an extensive network of colleagues and fostering friendly working relationships with our clients, various institutions and authorities, locally as well as key industry players internationally, our team is able to facilitate business and legal needs of our clients and is geared to serve them in an intelligent, client-responsive manner.

A common theme across the continent has been improving infrastructure and our firm has had the pleasure of assisting clients with various infrastructure and trade related projects in Egypt. Taking into consideration the firm’s third core value of ‘Firm Wide Excellence’, we find that demanding excellence of all members of our firm’s community, practice groups, attorneys and support staff is mutually beneficial to our success and to attaining our clients’ expectations. While working on those projects for our clients we made sure that not only is the end result of our work of the highest quality, but also that the processes that guide such work are of equal calibre and thus serve our clients with valuable input throughout the transaction. Moreover, our involvement in such mega infrastructure projects has afforded our firm invaluable perspective on the current agenda moving forward.

The success of projects and transactions of our clients is a success we share with them, hence aligning with our fourth core value ‘Sharing Success’, as our team works hard to be the foremost to furnish our clients with foremost legal counsel which may impact our clients’ operations and business success. At Eldib Advocates we value the success of our team, recognising that our clients’ success is in part the firm’s success and for the firm and client to succeed, we need co-operation on all levels, industrial, national and continental. As an essential part of Eldib Advocates day-to-day work, we follow up on the enactment of different local laws and regulations as well as international conventions affecting the marine and transport industries internationally, whether it be with the IMO or the African Union.

Our firm provides quite a wide range of legal and consultative services and information concerning contracts or proposed contracts bids and tenders as well as laws, decrees regulations, rules affecting the clients’ operations and other legal services that our client may consider necessary or that we as a firm find advisable in order to achieve the optimum potential.

Africa is essential to Egypt, and Egypt considers itself Africa’s corridor to Europe and the Middle East. Therefore, co-operation between Egypt and African nations and clients is no longer just a luxury but rather a necessity. Eldib Advocates is a leading law firm in Egypt with an international focus and we take pride in spearheading efforts to pave the path of co-operation, collaboration and cohesiveness within Africa, with an eye for a better unified Africa.