Dr. Mahutodji Jimmy Vital Kodo, FCIArb, is an independent lawyer and arbitrator. He is also the former Technical advisor to the President of the Common Court of Justice and Arbitration of the organization for Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA), in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

Before joining the Court, he has practiced law in Paris and Nanterre (France) and served as Adjunct Professor at the University of Paris-Est Creteil, France. He holds law degrees respectively from University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin (Master’s Degree), University of Lille 2, France (LL.M), and University of Paris-Est Creteil (LL.D). In 2008, Dr. Kodo co-authored the Annotated OHADA Code, published by the Institut International de Droit d’Expression et d’Inspirations Françaises (IDEF).

He also published the first comprehensive case law study of the application of OHADA law since the establishment of that legislation (L’Application des Actes Uniformes de l’OHADA, Publications de l’Institut Universitaire André Ryckmans 5 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia-Bruylant, 2010). Jimmy Kodo is the author of “Arbitration in Africa Under the OHADA Rules”, an in-depth study into the practice of arbitration under the OHADA Rules, published in 2020 by Wolters Kluwer.

As a research assistant at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom, he helped on a comparative study of the legislation of 32 European countries to assess legal preparedness for the influenza pandemic across Europe (PHLaw Flu Project), funded by the European Union.