HiiL Innovating Justice has set up a hub in West Africa. The hub was setup during the launch of an information session at the IDEA Nigeria.
The HiiL Innovating Justice hub is meant to provide a co-working space for startup entrepreneurs and tech innovators, where they can work side by side and come up with solutions to challenges affecting West Africa.
This move will also improve access to justice for many people in West Africa and Africa in general. Not forgetting that the tech solutions developed will hasten the judicial services and shorten the period taken to reach a judicial ruling.
Olufunbi Falayi, the HiiL Innovating Justice Regional Liason said the hub is a new dawn for the justice system in Africa. He said, “We are aiming to make legal processes simpler and more efficient by using technology, and this hub will strive to ensure that this is archived.”
HiiL is opening local justice hubs across the continent to scout, select and accelerate justice innovations. Over the past year, local HiiL agents have been scouting and accelerating justice innovations in Nairobi’s iHub and Nailab, leading up to the East African Innovating Justice Hub planned to open early next year. More justice hubs are expected to be set up in North and Southern Africa.
The West Africa Hub is already incubating DIYLaw.ng (www.diylaw.ng), the winner of the 2015 SME Empowerment Innovation Challenge. This Challenge was developed by HiiL, together with the Global Agenda Council on Justice and the Ford Foundation, to support African innovations that tackle barriers to SME growth in the region. In particular, the challenge aims to find innovations that address regulatory hurdles and bureaucratic red tape faced by youth-led startups in East and West Africa. The call for applications for the 2016 SME Empowerment Challenge will start this month on https://innovatingjustice.com/en/.
Wilfried De Wever, Head of the HiiL Innovating Justice Accelerator stressed the importance of youth led start-ups, observing that investing in the business climate from the bottom-up increases the sustainability of the flow of capital to the continent: “These innovations can significantly contribute to the improvement of the daily lives of people and SMEs across Africa.”
