<p>The volume <italic>Litigating the Right to Health in Africa</italic> tackles the issue of social rights litigation which – particularly in the Global South – has already been around for some time and has promoted the emergence of a flourishing literature.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that the issue is abundantly studied, the rationale of the volume is that, to date, comparative research has paid little attention to the specific issue of health rights litigation, and therefore it aims at being innovative by filling an existing gap.</p>
<p>After an introduction pointing out the relevance of health rights litigation in Africa, the volume is articulated in three parts: Part I is dedicated to the normative framework on the right to health (Chapters 1–2); Part II contains country-specific case studies (Chapters 3–9); and Part III deals with a comparative regional study (Chapters 10–11).</p>
<p>The country-specific cases cover different African regions (Central Africa, Southern Africa, Western Africa and East Africa), offering a quite broad snapshot of the current judicial development.</p>
<p>Social rights litigation is particularly developed in South Africa, and therefore case law is obviously included: the chapter by E. J. Broster provides a full picture of judicial approaches to social rights litigation since the 1990s. The author retraces some well-known cases concerning the right to access to healthcare, such as <italic>Minister of Health and Others</italic> v. <italic>Treatment Action Campaign and Others</italic>, which ordered the government to provide antiretroviral treatment in the public healthcare system to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. It discusses also the rejection of the minimum core content by the Constitutional Court, and its preference for the reasonableness measure that allows the determination of the effectiveness of the legislature and executive in translating socio-economic rights (SERs) into reality.</p>
<p>The author points out how this development has been facilitated by the favourable constitutional framework, which is one of the few that contains justiciable SERs. This is not the case in other countries discussed in the volume. One example is Nigeria, where SERs are enshrined in the 1979 Constitution as Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy. The chapter ‘Litigating Health Rights Issues: The Nigerian Experience’, by J. Odikpo and E. Durojaye, points out this challenge and reflects on the positive impact that the African Charter can have in this regard.</p>
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