On the 29th of October, 2021, AfLLIP in line with its core mandate of being the authoritative voice and capacity developing platform for law librarians in Africa will commence its series of webinars. The series of the webinars will be tailored towards enhancing and sustaining professionalism and key competencies of African Law Librarians and other Information Professionals in the delivery of their professional services across the continent in Africa.
The maiden edition with the topic ‘African Legal Resources’ scheduled to be hosted by Dr. Christopher M. Owusu-Ansah will be delivered by Mariya Badeva-Bright by 29th of October, 2021 at 10:00am GMT.
Described by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) as ‘a veteran open access activist’, the presenter-Mariya is an active member of the Publication sub-committee of AfLLIP. A technology lawyer per excellence, she has been actively engaged in the promotion of free access to law in Africa since 2004. In 2010, Mariya co-founded the African Legal Information Institute (African LII) which she now manages and directs at the Democratic Governance and Rights Unit, University of Cape Town. She is also the co-founder of Laws.Africa, a South African non-profit organisation digitising African law for public use and re-use.
A 2003 holder of LL.M in Law and Information Technology from Stockholm University, Sweden, Mariya taught Legal Information Literacy and the Cyberlaw LLM at the Law School of the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa from 2005 to 2010. Mariya was also the Head of Legal Informatics and Policy at SAFLII.
In 2009-2011, Mariya led the African component of a global study on the sustainability and impact of free access to law projects in Southern and East Africa. She is currently, a Section Editor of the Journal of Open Access to Law. Her work focuses on sustaining a network of efficient, functional and viable free and open access legal publishers in Africa.
She will be sharing at the seminar, her experience as a crusader and advocate of open access legal information regime in Africa and the state of African Legal Resources.
Chair, AfLLIP Webinar Committee