Dr. Mahutodji Jimmy Vital Kodo is an Attorney (Avocat à la Cour) and Member of the Hauts-de-Seine Bar Association in France, an independent arbitrator, and a leading OHADA expert and practitioner with over fifteen years of experience.

In addition to his traditional litigation and arbitration practice before the courts in France, he has been appointed arbitrator by African States in investment disputes and regularly represents parties in complex litigation and arbitration proceedings as well as appeals before the Common Court of Justice and Arbitration (CCJA), the Court of Final Appeal for the seventeen African States Parties to the OHADA Treaty.

A bilingual (English and French) practitionner, he obtained a master’s degree in business law from the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin, an L.L.M. in corporate law from the University of Lille, and a Ph.D. summa cum laude in African business law (OHADA) from the University of Paris-Est Créteil, France. The Ph.D. thesis of Dr. Kodo, which was published in 2010, constitutes the only comprehensive study of published OHADA jurisprudence and has contributed to the development of the Treatise on OHADA (Code Pratique Francis Lefebvre OHADA : Traité, Actes uniformes et Règlements annotés) published by Editions Francis Lefebvre since 2013, and of which Dr. Kodo is the director since 2016.

From 2014 to 2016, Dr. Kodo has been the Technical Advisor to the President of the CCJA, the only attorney to have held such office. Before becoming the Technical Advisor to the President of the CCJA, he was an adjunct law professor at the University of Paris-Est Créteil (France). Dr. Kodo is an expert trainer in OHADA law and has acted in that capacity for the OHADA Superior Regional School of Magistracy (ERSUMA).

In addition to his arbitration and litigation practice, Dr. Kodo has published extensively on OHADA-related topics and has been a speaker at various institutions such as the World Bank and the American Society of International Law (ASIL). He has also spoken on OHADA-related topics in the United Kingdom, China, Canada, Israel, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, and Rwanda.

He has been invited as a guest lecturer at many foreign universities, such as the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Howard University, and George Washington University in Washington, DC, USA. In addition, Dr. Kodo delivered the keynote speech at the 26th Fulbright Symposium on International Legal Problems on April 7, 2016, at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, California. 

A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (London, United Kingdom), Dr. Kodo is a certified arbitrator of the CCJA and is listed on the Arbitrator Roster list of many institutions around the world.

As an independent practitioner, Dr. Kodo has acted as co-arbitrator in Investor-State disputes and as sole arbitrator and counsel in commercial and construction disputes.

In 2021, as a Consultant for the Investment Climate Reform (ICR) Facility (co-funded by the European Union, the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH – GIZ, the British Council – BC, Expertise France – EF, and Stichting Nederlandse Ontwikkelingsorganisatie – Netherlands Development Organisation, SNV), Dr. Kodo revised the Arbitration Rules of the National Centre for Arbitration, Conciliation and Mediation (CENACOM) of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo; and also trained more than eighty arbitrators of the centre.