Mostly, African States keep on carrying their activities with the boundaries inherited from their colonial powers’ arrangements until they discover a vital interest on these colonial boundaries before they stand for redefinition of these colonial boundaries. Angola and DRC couldn’t make exception to this behavior. Divergent points of views on the validity of a colonial treaty render this redefinition impossible. These two States concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which may lead them to a provisional arrangement known as Joint Development Agreement under UNCLOS in August 2003. In 2004, the two countries created, in principle, the Common Interest Zone as a new special exploration area on which they were jointly expecting to carry out exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbon activities. Unfortunately, this project is not effective until today. While researching the reasons pertaining this statu quo, this paper questions the validity of 1884’s treaty, and then find out, after deep analysis of that MoU that the lack of good faith may be preventing these States from cooperation.
Keywords: Memorandum of Understanding; Obligation to cooperate; UNCLOS; Good faith.
