African Online Library on Law and Governance
Factsheet
1. The Goal
The African Online Library on Law and Governance (short African Law Library ALL) aims at
being the leading, innovative online portal for African Law and Governance.
The difficult access to law in many African countries is an obstacle for developing a stable rule of law
(and thereby strengthen the countries themselves) and for attracting international FDI. A transparent and
disclosed corpus juris, consisting of law texts, court decisions and secondary literature would help to
strengthen justice, accountability, predictability, to reduce arbitrariness, to enhance trust in government
and administration, to empower the poor and therefore to stabilize the democracy.
At present, even at law schools and Universities, students are often trained and educated based on
foreign law texts because their national law texts are not available, or unaffordable! To provide
students, researchers, teachers, practitioners and the population as whole with better access to their own
African corpus juris, will therefore ultimately also strengthen the identity.
The goal of this library is to create a public good from Africans for Africans and for worldwide users
interested in African law and governance, for free.
2. The Concept
The platform on www.africanlawlibrary.net (accessible from 2013) will include three elements:
Online Library: full texts, for free, multilingual, all Africa







online access to legal texts, selected court decisions and secondary literature from (all) African
countries:
full texts, downloadable and printable
access for free (after registration/login for free)
Multilingual and fully searchable by subjects, keywords, country, type of document
Collections of secondary literature: commentaries, scientific articles, educational documents
Collection classification: by country, themes, type of organization and document
Harvesting of online articles on law and governance in Africa: articles, commentaries…
Network and Research: network across countries and comparative research

a platform for peers to interact and exchange


a network of participants and a directory of experts, searchable and can be contacted
Research online workgroups (national, continental, intercontinental) e.g. for comparative law
between countries and many other research fields.
Target Groups
 Academics: Teachers; Master and Doctoral students of law, students in high schools for civic
and governance education, secondary education, social science;
 Politics: Decision makers, Parliamentarians, civil servants/ public administration, public
committees such as anti-corruption and governance commissions, compliance officers in
private sector
 Law: Courts, Lawyers
 Business: Economy/business,
 Private sector: NGO’s; compliance and ethics officers; Consultants in different sectors of
society; Media, electronic and print media, journalists; All interested who have access to
internet, independent of location.
3. The Partners
From Africans for Africans and the world
Key actors of ALL will be the national authorities and specialized institutions of African countries to
collect, select and make available the law documents. This will be done with National Focal Points for
each country.
A Project of the African Innovation Foundation
ALL is a project of the African Innovation Foundation (AIF). This foundation supports the mobilezation for innovation towards sustainable development in Africa. AIF’s areas of activity encompass
programmes & projects in the fields of innovation & access to technologies, governance, education &
culture and health. The foundation seeks to establish cooperation platforms for institutions, investors
and scientists and promote ideas to support them. AIF also wishes to promote transparent processes and
procedures within the public sector and combat illegitimate appropriation and dissipation of resources
within both the private and public domains.
In partnership with Globethics.net Foundation as implementing partner
Globethics.net Foundation (GE), based in Geneva/Switzerland, is the implementing partner of AIF for
the African Law Library. Globethics.net is specialised on sharing information on ethics especially for
developing and emerging countries. Since four years it runs the leading global online library on ethics
with over one million full text documents. It also has a network of over 65’000 registered participants
from 200 countries, including from all African countries. AIF benefits for ALL from the GE experience
in the library, the network and from the advanced innovative technology.
4. The Technology
The African Law Library uses the technological platform of GE for the integration of a broad variety of
document sources and participants profiles. An independent assessment of the technology from
September 2012 concluded: “Globethics.net has a comprehensive platform with an excellent number of
digital library features and community platform features. It has further an aggregation/import system
that very much suits the needs of a digital library. With respect to quality assurance the development
process in place is mature and the software is tested according to industry standards in a three-stage
environment.” The following chart shows the Globethics.net/ALL system overview:
5. The Funding
The African Law Library for the period 2012-2014 is funded by the African Innovation Foundation.
The African countries through the National Focal Points are asked to provide experts and staff for the
documentation. For special projects (e.g. on customary law, comparative law, teaching material)
additional funds will be needed.
6. The Implementation
Milestones




The ALL project started on 1 Oct. 2012 for the period 2012-2014.
First information are available on the website www.africanlawlibrary.net
8 countries from all parts of Africa will be the first tier countries for 2013
The launch of ALL is planned for third quarter 2013
Project Staff



Dr. Ghislain Patrick Lessene, Senior Legal Advisor African Law Library, from Central African
Republic [email protected]
Rosa Anaba Hänseler, Programme Coordinator African Law Library, from Cameroon
[email protected]
John Miller, Senior Librarian African Law Library, from Great Britain
[email protected]
Project Management


Dr. Sandra von Salis, attorney-at-law, LL.M., Project Manager (African Innovation
Foundation), [email protected] and David Keller, CEO (African Innovation
Foundation), [email protected]
Prof. Dr. Christoph Stückelberger, Programme Director African Law Library and Executive
Director of Globethics.net, [email protected]
■