User:Savannah75/African Law Library

The African Law Library (ALL), which launched in 2012 to help Africans access legal data freely and to understand their rights, has an interesting story behind it. It was founded as a direct result of a personal experience Mr bastos de Morais encountered when he bought some land in Africa. An old soba from Cabinda was quick to point out that the land still would not belong to him as long as he had not performed the traditional rites to assign ownership...even though he had followed all the necessary administrative and legal procedures. He eventually went to the village to offer food and wine to the ancestors. With the mediation of an elderly local wise man, he was guided to perform the necessary traditional rites before the ancestors allowed him to own the land.

So Mr.Bastos de Morais created the ALL as an online portal that would bring these parallel legal realities under one hub, which Africans could freely and easily access. Today the ALL contains thousands of legal documents ranging from legislations, acts, court rulings, and customary laws in various languages from many African nations, as well as a host of secondary sources including legal commentaries, journals, dissertations, books and articles.

With the help of ALL's regional partner institutions as well as its national, library and service partners, the ALL is helping to champion freedom of information and public access for Africans all over the continent. Together the ALL is helping thousands of people in Africa to understand their legal rights. The ALL now has over 50 partner entities in 20 African countries, with plans to extend its services to the rest of Africa by 2017. With many sub-Saharan African nations now moving towards e-governance, the ALL works closely with relevant legal authorities to digitize data and provide the public with up-to-date legal information that can change their lives for the better.

Category:Law in Africa