The African Legal Award’s highly-competitive Innovation Award has once again been awarded to Afriwise. The announcement comes at a time when the need for innovative tech solutions for businesses operating in Africa has never been greater.
· Judges announced that Afriwise “displayed a level of innovation that gave it that extra edge, in a highly competitive field”.
· Particular recognition was given to Afriwise’s quick response to COVID-19, through its rapid introduction of a complimentary module in March. The module was used by hundreds of businesses operating in Africa.
· International firms such as IBM, Vodacom, Bolloré, General Electric, Deloitte, Absa and many others have subscribed to Afriwise in order to streamline their business operations.
If an organisation wishes to find out if a restraint of trade can be enforced in Mozambique, or what constitutes copyright infringement in Nigeria, it can simply log on to the platform and instantly find answers to these questions and all information pertinent to these topics. Adding to this a purpose-built online user interface, an underlying service for clarification requests and direct access to top in-country legal experts, Afriwise is doing pioneering work in the legal-service sector. No such tool has ever been made available to organisations in many of the countries in which they are operating, including jurisdictions such as the DRC, Angola and Mozambique, where finding legal information can be a challenge.
The platform is a perfect example of how the legal sector can be made more efficient and effective. In the long-term, it has the potential to assist thousands of people to understand the legal complexities in many African countries.
In light of the continued impact COVID-19 is having on businesses globally, an online solution such as this has never been more critical for businesses which have been forced to work remotely. In March 2020, Afriwise launched a free interactive COVID-19 module on the platform. The module was collated from Afriwise’s existing content, meaning that it went live almost immediately, and ensured that hundreds of legal teams had 24-hour access to answers to their COVID-19-related questions. This provided a major boost for businesses and led the platform to be recognised as the winner of the Innovation Award (Client/External) at the international awards ceremony, hosted on 17thSeptember by Legal Week and the Corporate Counsel Association of South Africa.
Steven De Backer,Afriwise’s CEO: “We are delighted and extremely proud to have won the African Legal Awards’ Innovation Award for the second year running. Innovation is crucial to the continuing success of our organisation; we constantly strive to update and adapt our platform to better cater for the needs of our subscribers and the market.
Since March of this year we have seen rapid changes as coronavirus has acted as an unexpected catalyst for legal innovation. We are living in a time where digital innovation in particular has imminent potential to disrupt the legal sector in Africa. At Afriwise, together with top law firms across the continent, we are doing just this – setting a new standard for finding and accessing legal information in Africa.
We will continue to practise and promote innovation in the legal sector in Africa”.
Hosted by Legal Week and the Corporate Counsel Association of South Africa, the African Legal Awards recognise exceptional achievement within Africa’s legal community. Winners are selected by an independent panel of nearly 30 judges, made up of general counsel and other members of the international legal community.
To find out more about Afriwise, please visit our website.
For further information, contact: Emma Hooper
Email: emma.hooper@afriwise.com
Mobile: +44 (0) 7496012667
Afriwise is an innovative legal-tech company, registered in Belgium at 5 Place Sainte Gudule, Brussels, Brussels 1000, BE. Afriwise combines local legal know-how with powerful technology to give organisations access to up-to-date legal information on African countries.