Our Services

Laws.Africa offers a range of services in support of our mission to improve access to African legal materials.

Use Our African Legislation Content

Use Laws.Africa legislation content to power your business, research or non-profit interventions.

Use machine-friendly legislation and metadata to build apps and services that make it easier for users to find, work with and understand African legislation.
Laws.Africa legislation content is available as machine-readabel Akoma Ntoso XML through the Laws.Africa Content API.
Laws.Africa Content API

Government Gazette Scanning and Publishing

We source, digitise and preserve historical and current Government Gazettes.

We partner with universities, the legal and justice sector, archival institutes and research organisations to fund and exchange gazette collections.
Gazette digitisation ensures access to this vital source of Government information is preserved and accessible in perpetuity and for the benefit of all Africans.

All gazettes are published for free on Gazettes.Africa, the largest direct-access, fully searchable, unrestricted digital collection of African gazettes.

Legislation and Policy Document Digitisation

We are leaders in converting African legal and policy materials into consistent, machine-readable Akoma Ntoso XML (AKN), the industry standard format for legislative documents.

XML is machine-readable and enables access-to-justice innovations through analysis and machine learning technologies.
XML enables a wide range of automated publication outputs, including for web, mobile, e-book (Kindle, EPUB) and print-ready PDF from a single source of truth.
We model legislative documents using Akoma Ntoso and provide guidance and expertise on applying the standard to a variety of document types and legislative traditions.
We provide guidance on how to effectively use Akoma Ntoso in a range of organisations to maximise its impact and help users find the information they need.
Our AKN4Africa recommendation describes how to name and identify a wide variety of African legal and policy materials using the Akoma Ntoso Naming Convention.
We provide best practices for publishing legislation online to guide publishers in how to make their legislative documents accessible and user-friendly.

Legal Information Technology

We build cutting edge technology to manage and publish digital legislation databases, and specialise in the design, launch and maintenance of legal information portals.

Our open source Indigo Legislation Platform makes managing and publishing a machine-readable legislation database. Indigo supports amendments, point-in-time comparison, complex commencements and multiple output formats.
We conduct ongoing user research to understand the needs of a wide range of legal information users and stakeholders across Africa, and use this to continually improve the availability and accessibility of this information.
Our legal information technology underpins AfricanLII.org and enables the largest collection of freely available African legal information in the world, serving hundreds of thousands of users each month.

Capacity building for civil society organisations

We work with funders, the legal and justice sectors, and non-profit organisations to help them incorporate primary legal information from our openly licensed collections into their access to justice activities.

We use our decades of expertise in legal systems, technology and information standards to help organisations build websites and applications that provide real and sustainable value to their users.
Our support enables efficient, higher-impact funder and civil society programming.

Capacity Building for African Government Institutions

We capacitate African governments to modernise their legislation publication processes and make foundational legal information available to the public.

We believe in open access and ensuring that governments have full ownership of their legislation.
We offer our platforms, knowledge base and training to Attorneys General’s offices, Law Reform Commissions, Government Printers, Parliaments and Judiciaries across the continent in support of their work and mandates.

Training

Together with AfricanLII and the Democratic Governance and Rights Unit (DGRU) at the University of Cape Town, we offer certified courses in:

  1. Legal information digitisation, legislation consolidation and revision.
  2. Using Internet platforms to effectively disseminate legal information to broad audiences.

How can we help you?

Get in touch to find out how we can help you.

Contact Us