The LegalTech company Afriwise and Sabinet, one of South Africa’s leading legal information providers, entered a channel partnership. By working together, Sabinet and Afriwise aim to make compliance easier and more accessible for companies operating across Africa. The collaboration will help businesses stay up to date with legal and regulatory requirements. “It will help minimise the risks and implications of non-compliance, a growing concern of corporate leaders.”

Global leaders struggle with Africa’s compliance landscape.

Countries across Africa are introducing legislation at the speed of light. Recent legal developments include anti-money laundering, bribery and corruption, antitrust regulations, trade and export controls, environmental, employment and human rights laws, and cybersecurity and data protection laws.

This finding is underscored by a recent Baker McKenzie report amongst global leaders and legal advisors. It showed that, of all the regions in which to do business, 48% thought Africa was the most challenging. The rapidly evolving legal and regulatory landscape is making it hard for business to stay compliant and avoid risks.

The cost of non-compliance is steep.

Steven De Backer, founder and CEO of Afriwise, noted that the changing landscape has brought about a greater need for legal and regulatory sourcing solutions:

“Staying up to date with legal and regulatory requirements is becoming increasingly complex. The risks have heightened significantly in recent years, and the implications and costs of non-compliance are steep.”

An integrated view on regulatory frameworks.

Having the full view on regulatory requirements is key for any compliance programme. Sabinet further notes how the cooperation of Sabinet and Afriwise will benefit legal and compliance executives:

“Sabinet’s in-depth South African legislative, judicial and legal research collection complements Afriwise’s offering focusing on the rest of Africa.   Combining these resources will provide a unique and valuable offering to our clients” Rosalind Hattingh, MD: Sabinet

A 360° view on compliance.

Sabinet’s in-depth legal resources and news for South Africa, dating back 112 years, will complement Afriwise’s growing content portfolio. In addition, Sabinet will be able to offer its clients access to Africa’s largest cross-border legal and regulatory database operated and maintained by Afriwise. This cooperation will act as the definitive one-stop shop for legal and compliance professionals and offer them a 360° view of what is required for their business to stay compliant across Africa.

About Afriwise

Legal-tech company Afriwise was founded in 2018 with a firm belief that companies doing business in Africa deserve easy access to accurate legal intelligence.

Afriwise enables businesses to break free of the chaos of finding and complying with African laws and regulations. At the heart of Afriwise is top-notch legal information on all areas of business law. Working together with the best African in-country law firms ensures that information is reliable, trustworthy and up to date.

The platform’s AI-powered user interface makes it easy for legal and compliance teams to find, monitor and understand all the legal requirements their business faces across the continent. Using Afriwise, busy corporate counsel are relieved from tediously gathering and double-checking legal intelligence and have time to spend on those high-value tasks that really make a difference to their business.

Afriwise currently has 30+ team members and is active in 25 African jurisdictions, covering more than 80% of the African economy. Afriwise is trusted by and relied on by top companies such as Coca-Cola, MTN, ExxonMobil and Standard Bank. Afriwise has repeatedly been awarded the Innovation Award at the Africa Legal Awards and included in Stanford’s Code X and Deloitte’s RegTech universes.

About Sabinet

Our roots are in resource sharing.

Sabinet provides central platforms for collaboration and resource sharing. Collaborative and effective resource sharing is the way of the future. Our commitment to facilitating access to information has seen us flourish from providing library support services to offering customised information-centric services for libraries, corporates, small businesses, students, the media and researchers.

This has prepared us well for today’s business world which demands ongoing innovation, system enhancements and new digital solutions to ensure growth, relevance, efficiency and sustainability. As such, we invested in and launched our new delivery and discovery platform Sabinet Discover. This next-generation, cloud-based open platform delivers authoritative news, research and legal content from a single, scalable interface. For our stakeholders, Sabinet Discover represents expanded technological and operational capabilities.

Our relevance is as important as our success and we continue to view the future as an opportunity where we can play an important role in the building of our country.

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