1. Introduction

The Akoma Ntoso (AKN) Naming Convention for uniquely naming documents and elements within them provides a framework for naming documents in a consistent and replicable way. This is crucial for referring to other pieces of legislation (or any of their provisions) from a given AKN document.

The aim of the AKN4Africa Recommendation is to provide guidance on the implementation of this framework in the African context, taking into account documents from African countries and regional bodies and their drafting traditions. The AKN4UN and AKN4EU projects provide similar guidance for applying AKN naming conventions to UN and EU documents.

This Recommendation is meant for users already familiar with the AKN standard and conventions, as the intention is to add to the existing standard rather than reinventing any of it.

Laws.Africa is not an official body like the UN or the EU, but we also haven’t found an existing convention for using AKN in the African context. We are therefore publishing our interpretation of the AKN standard for documents from African jurisdictions:

• based on our experience supporting African governments that are building their own AKN collections, and applying AKN to documents across a number of African jurisdictions;
• as a recommendation to other users of AKN across Africa for how to generate FRBR URIs (and eIds); and
• to help anyone resolving links to Laws.Africa-generated AKN documents.

2. Resources

The following resources informed the structure of this document and the issues discussed.

• Akoma Ntoso Naming Convention: http://docs.oasis-open.org/legaldocml/akn-nc/v1.0/akn-nc-v1.0.html
• AKN4UN: https://unsceb-hlcm.github.io/
• AKN4EU: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/akn4eu

3. Generating FRBR URIs

AKN FRBR URIs are constructed as follows, with the grey text indicating that an element is optional:

/akn/2-letter country code-locality code/doctype/subtype/author/year/number

In general, lowercase all letters and don’t use any spaces. The sections below go into detail about each of the FRBR URI elements. Before that, we outline our guiding principles when deciding how to structure FRBR URIs in a given jurisdiction. At the end are example FRBR URIs for regional and country legislation. We have aimed to include an example for each doctype and subtype.

3.1 Guiding principles

3.1.1 Uniqueness, consistency and replicability

FRBR URIs are used to identify specific documents, or ‘works’ in AKN and FRBR nomenclature. Uniqueness is thus critical.

Consistency and replicability are crucial for accurately referencing (and dereferencing) documents.

When determining the various FRBR URI elements, use the most authoritative source to ensure replicability without coordination. For instance, use Parliament’s numbering system to identify Acts.

3.1.2 Respecting local traditions

We recommend striking a balance between consistency and local traditions, because a convention should make sense to the people using it. Where it is possible and meaningful to consistently incorporate a jurisdiction’s local naming convention into the FRBR URI, do so.

For example:

• The reference numbers of ACHPR Resolutions have the form ‘ACHPR/Res. 343(LVIII) 2016’. In AKN nomenclature this includes the author (achpr), the type (resolution), the number (343) and the year (2016). However, it also includes the session number, 58 (or LVIII). While it isn’t strictly necessary to include the number under the AKN Naming Convention, we include it in the FRBR URIs because it is commonly used when referring to ACHPR Resolutions: /akn/aa/statement/resolution/achpr/2016/58-343.
• ECOWAS documents are referred to as e.g. ‘A/SA.1/12/14’. The subtype (supplementary-act), year (2014) and number (1) are all included, as is the month in which the Supplementary Act was signed. The month isn’t strictly necessary to identify ‘Supplementary Act 1 of 2014’, but because it’s part of the local tradition, we include it in the FRBR URI: /akn/aa-ecowas/act/supplementary-act/2014/12-1.

When including information in FRBR URIs that isn’t strictly necessary, start with more general information and work your way to increasingly specific information (to the right of the FRBR URI) . When we include the session number for ACHPR Resolutions, and the month for ECOWAS documents, they come before the number itself, with a hyphen, because the number is the most specific element.

3.2 Country code

Always use a 2-letter country code, whether the jurisdiction is a literal country or a regional body.

3.2.1 Literal countries

For countries, use the ISO 3166 2-letter code, e.g. ke for Kenya (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2).

3.2.2 Regional bodies

For African Union documents, use aa as the country code. We chose this code because there is no official ISO 3166 code for the African Union, the code au is already assigned (as are af and ua), but aa is not and can be assigned freely by users.

For other regional bodies in Africa, use aa as the country code in combination with a locality code, e.g. aa-ecowas.

Note: The non-AU regional bodies in Africa – such as the EAC, ECOWAS, and SADC – are top-level authorities and aren’t sub-places within the AU the way that provinces are within a country. However, we cannot use them as top-level countries because we are constrained by the need for a two-letter country code. We have chosen to place them under the African Union country code (aa) rather than another arbitrary country code such as xx for ‘Other’.

3.3 Locality code

Locality codes are used for:

• sub-national legislation, e.g. Provincial Acts, County Acts, or Municipal By-laws; and
• regional legislation that uses the aa country code.

The locality code is always preceded by a two-letter country code and a hyphen. Hyphens within a locality code are allowed; any spaces or other punctuation should be replaced with hyphens or removed.

Where possible, use the official locality codes assigned by a jurisdiction.

For example,

• Kenyan Counties are assigned numbers from 001 to 047. The FRBR URI for a Mombasa County Act would therefore start /akn/ke-001/….
• In South Africa, municipalities are assigned codes. The FRBR URI for a Municipal By-law in Mbizana would therefore start /akn/za-ec443/….

3.4 Doctype and subtype

For examples of doctypes and subtypes, see the Example FRBR URIs section.

3.4.1 Doctype

• For legislation – Acts, Regulations, Statutory Instruments, and the like – use act.
  These are documents that have the force of law.
• For soft law – Resolutions, Guidelines, Decisions, Model laws, Agreements, and the like – use statement.
  These are documents that don’t (or only sometimes) have the force of law, but do still have to do with the law (to varying degrees).
• For case law, use judgment.
• For other documents – Policies, Memoranda of Understanding, Yearbooks, Press Releases, and the like – use doc.
  This document, for example, would use the doc doctype.

3.4.2 Subtype

• If the document is anything other than an act / statement / judgment / doc, use whatever it calls itself as the subtype, e.g. act/si for a Statutory Instrument (‘act’ because it has the force of law).
• The same subtype should always be used with the same doctype: One should be able to reliably predict, for example, that a set of guidelines will always have statement/guidelines as the doctype/subtype combination.

3.4.2.1 Regional legislation

Use the full subtype for regional legislation (and not an abbreviated form), because regional legislation applies to multiple jurisdictions and it can’t be assumed that everyone across the region will use the same set of conventional abbreviations.

For document types that typically appear in the plural, e.g. Guidelines, use the plural in the AKN subtype (guidelines). If a document type that usually appears in the singular has an instance that appears in the plural, use the singular for that instance. Don’t use both the singular and the plural, or any other variances of a document type, because this lessens the likelihood of documents linking to each other reliably.

If a document type that typically appears in the plural is used in the singular in a given jurisdiction, do use it in the singular in that jurisdiction, but consistently. An example of this is Regulation (regulation) in ECOWAS.

3.4.2.2 Country legislation

Use the local tradition for the subtype, because we can assume that people will be familiar with conventional abbreviations within a country. The local tradition will often have an abbreviated form for the subtype, unlike with regional legislation.

Again, don’t use plurals or other variances of document types, as it makes it more difficult for documents to refer to each other reliably and predictably.

Inevitably, a document type will exist for which an abbreviation has already been chosen. When this happens, choose a longer abbreviation for the ‘new’ document type, and leave the existing one as is. For example, Premier’s Notice (premn) was added after Provincial Notice (pn). Try to map out all subtypes beforehand to avoid such a clash.

3.5 Author

Include the author to differentiate from the ‘default’ author, and where it’s necessary to clearly differentiate between similar documents with different authors.

For national legislation the author of the work level is not usually specified, as the ‘author’ of national legislation is usually always the same body (e.g. the National Assembly in South Africa).

For example, the default author of African Union legislation is the Assembly of the African Union and is not specified. If a document that is applicable to the African Union was authored by a different body, e.g. the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, include the author to differentiate it from the default.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of relevant bodies and their ‘author’ codes.

Abbreviate the author only if a body is usually referred to by that abbreviation.

3.6 Year

For the year, use the year of the work, in the format yyyy.

In many jurisdictions the Act number and year are formally assigned by Parliament.

The year usually coincides with the year in which it was published, but if an Act was assigned the number / year combination ‘Act 32 of 2019’ but was only published in 2020, use ‘2019’ as the year. This is both to avoid clashes in numbering (in this example there may well also be an ‘Act 32 of 2020’) and to respect the official assignment.

For African Union, EAC, ECOWAS, and SADC documents, use the year of the date of adoption.

3.6 Number

The purpose of the number element in the FRBR URI is to clearly identify a given document (in that place, with that subtype, by that author, in that year). It’s the most specific piece of information about a document that can disambiguate it from its peers (e.g. all other Acts in that year).

We use a number whenever available, e.g. an Act number, notice number, Resolution number, etc.

(This is on the assumption that one would never have, for example, two Acts issued in the same year with the same Act number. Where this does happen due to a clerical error, we would add -b, -c, etc. at the end to the later Act(s), leaving the first Act with that number as is.)

If the number is a Roman numeral, use the Arabic number instead. This goes for the actual number of the document as well as session numbers and the like, if included.

Where there isn’t a number available, for instance the Guidelines on Freedom of Association and Assembly in Africa, use a short phrase, in this case freedom-of-association-and-assembly.

Omit:

• the subtype (in this case guidelines);
• the author, if applicable; and
• the place (in this case ‘Africa’, already being implied by the aa country code – we also omit ‘African Union’ for the same reason),

except when to do so would change the meaning. For example:

• Rules of Procedure of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 2020: /akn/aa/act/rules/achpr/2020/rules-of-procedure
• Statute of the Africa Sports Council: /akn/aa/act/statute/2016/africa-sports-council

When choosing such a phrase it’s important to bear in mind the purpose of the number element. If, for example, several ‘progress’ statements are typically issued by a body within a year, you may wish to number them progress-1, progress-2, etc. for disambiguation. But if each is typically on a different topic, the preference is to number them, for example, progress-environment, progress-public-health, etc.

3.6.1 Acts with Chapter numbers

Don’t use a Chapter (or Cap) number when generating an FRBR URI, because they change over time. Use the Act’s number as assigned in the original legislative process.

You can link the Cap number as a piece of document metadata and update it as necessary to ensure references are dereferenced accurately.

3.6.2 Judgments

Judgment numbers should be derived from an officially assigned Medium Neutral Citation (MNC) if possible. In most cases, the MNC includes a number that is unique either within a year, within a particular court, or both. Use the necessary elements from the MNC to generate a unique FRBR URI.

For example, Kenya Law assigns MNC numbers to Kenyan judgments which include a year and a court code. Judgment 5 of 2019 from the High Court of Kenya would use the FRBR URI /akn/ke/judgment/kehc/2019/5. Here, kehc identifies the document author: the High Court of Kenya.

3.7 Example FRBR URIs

The tables below aim to include all known document types but will certainly fail, if only because inevitably a new document type will be published in the future. The preceding sections are there to guide users in making the call when the tables fail, and explain how the tables were compiled.

3.7.1 Regional legislation

• African Union doctypes list compiled from https://au.int/treaties and https://www.achpr.org/resources.
• EAC doctypes list compiled from https://www.eac.int/documents/category/acts-of-the-community and https://www.eac.int/documents/category/eac-regulations.
• ECOWAS doctypes list compiled from https://www.ecowas.int/ecowas-law/.
• SADC doctypes list compiled from https://www.sadc.int/documents-publications/.

3.7.1.1 Documents with the act doctype

3.7.1.2 Documents with the statement doctype

3.7.1.3 Documents with the judgment doctype

3.7.1.4 Documents with the doc doctype

3.7.1.5 Documents with the documentCollection doctype

3.7.2 Country legislation

This non-exhaustive table is based on our experience with legislation from the jurisdictions listed below. We’ve mostly worked with only the English documents from these jurisdictions so far.

We’ll therefore very likely be adding to this table in future, but barring a major overhaul we won’t change what’s in it so far.

You may notice that only act is used as the doctype; this is because our focus within countries has been only on gazetted legislation, for which we will always use act.

These countries have helped informed this table:

• Botswana
• Ghana
• Kenya
• Lesotho
• Malawi
• Mauritius
• Namibia
• Nigeria
• South Africa
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe