SAFLII, the Southern African Legal Information Institute hosted a very successful international “Law via the Internet” conference at the Durban ICC on the 26th and 27th November 2009. The conference was well attended and had representation from all the LII operations around the world. Local South African speakers included Mark Heyink, Andrew Rens, David Taylor, Graham Giles and Justice O’Regan, who I think all spoke exceptionally well and covered very interesting topics.
The general message was that there is a very good template structure for new countries to publish their legal material online, and not only that, but a very helpful forum of people who are happy to help other LIIs get off the ground. Kenya Law Reports by Gladys Boss Shollei, gave a good report on how successful the Kenya LII has been, and how they now publish judgements to the web within 4 hours after being released.
SAFLII currently hosts Botswana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. And the idea is to wean these countries onto their own LIIs as soon as they have the infrastructure and knowledge to run independently.
Visit SAFLII at www.SAFLII.org.
