“The Indigo Trust’s partnership and reliable funding demonstrates how philanthropy can have impact at scale” Mariya Badeva and Greg Kempe, Co-founders of AfricanLII
In 2024, nearly half the world’s population in over 64 countries head to the polls. And yet democracy is under threat as citizens’ access to information, rights and freedoms are increasingly shaped by big technology firms.
The Indigo Trust recognised the role that technology can play in enabling citizens to access accurate information – and in holding decision-makers accountable. Focussing on Africa, where investment in technology had the potential for disproportionate positive impact, Indigo provided small, high-risk grants to early-stage projects using new technologies to increase democratic participation and citizenship.
From 2013, Indigo incubated (with start-up funding, networks and advice) the African Legal Information Institute (AfricanLII) and its digital arm, Laws.Africa. A decade later, these sister organisations are thriving. AfricanLII is the go-to organisation for free-to-access case law, legislation, and other legal documents from the African continent.
AfricanLII currently maintains legal portals in 16 African countries – used by 450,000 lawyers, journalists and citizens each month who are not charged for this service. That the information is free to access has been vital. Commercial options, where they exist, are too expensive for community groups or human rights lawyers in Africa, unlike in the UK and other wealthier countries where law firms can pay for information services.
Barefoot Law in Uganda, for example, helps ordinary citizens in rural areas by sourcing case law from AfricanLII’s platform to help citizens settle land disputes or seek legal remedies in domestic violence cases. To date, a fantastic 22,000 legal cases have been resolved with Barefoot Law’s intervention.
Apart from this direct application of the law, journalists also rely on AfricanLII to verify information and report accurately. Brian Muuo of Kenyans.co.ke notes how his team “…report on court cases every day… our editorial policy is that we must see actual court documents for any court case we want to report. We have a correspondent at one of the major courts but for 80% of the court cases we report on, our writers use AfricanLII sources to access the latest documents.”
As well as its value to civil society and legal experts, AfricanLII is now demonstrating to governments across the continent its trustworthy role in making legislation and in-depth case law easily accessible. Recently, the Ugandan and Tanzanian governments have integrated the LII into their annual budgets, with more potential governments in the pipeline.