Integrating AI into Legal Education in Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa: Sketching a Path Forward for Law Faculties
Picture Credit: "EdTechSR Ep 313: Navigating AI Regulations" by Wesley Fryer is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Across anglophone sub-Saharan Africa, law faculties have been slow to adopt curriculum reforms that reflect the fast-paced growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies.
Financial technologies, biometric surveillance, algorithmic decision-making, and digital platforms are reshaping the legal and economic landscape, yet legal education on the continent remains largely traditional, anchored on doctrines that fail to address these seismic shifts and their intersectional implications. Only a few institutions such as Stellenbosch University, currently offer a compulsory course on Law and Technology. The majority of law faculties surveyed focus broadly on ICT law, neglecting the more specific and complex intersections between AI and legal frameworks.
The inertia is not unique to Africa globally; law schools are struggling to keep pace with technological disruptions. However, the stakes are uniquely high in Africa. Imported AI systems risk entrenching new forms of digital colonialism, subordinating local norms, values, and rights through opaque models developed elsewhere. Without proactive legal education that understands and interrogates these systems, the continent risks navigating techno-legal terrains that were not designed with its realities in mind.
The need for legal professionals who understand the implications of AI is no longer speculative. AI systems already mediate financial transactions, impact criminal justice procedures, shape healthcare decisions, and even influence electoral processes, legal practitioners must therefore be equipped to respond critically and competently. Reforming legal education is urgent—not only to remain relevant, but to lead in shaping the continent’s technological future.
A viable starting point is the introduction of a specialized “Law and Technology” course. Whether titled “AI and the Law,” or “Tech and Justice,” the substance is more important than the name. Such a course should not simply list legal issues arising from AI. It must delve into the conceptual histories of both law and technology, exploring the ethical, social, cultural and political dilemmas their integration raises. Furthermore, it should be rooted in African philosophies such as Ubuntu, decolonial theories, and the continent’s regulatory realities. The focus should be on nurturing a distinctly African approach to AI and law, not to import Silicon Valley’s discourse.
“Students should, for example, learn how predictive policing intersects with criminal law and procedure, how smart contracts challenge traditional notions of consensus, or how AI-based hiring systems raise novel anti-discrimination concerns in labour law”.
To be impactful, the course should be mandatory, ideally introduced in the second or third year of a law degree, and taught using a critical, interdisciplinary, and interactive methodology. African students should engage African scholarship on AI, be able to question the norms embedded in algorithmic systems, and consider how local values might better regulate or resist these systems. The objective is not to produce rule-memorizers, but reflective, adaptive, and context-aware legal thinkers.
That said, institutional constraints are real. Many faculties lack the funding, infrastructure, or trained personnel to immediately roll out such specialized programs. But this does not make reform impossible. A flexible, multi-pronged strategy can help. For example, law faculties can adopt an “integrated” approach, whereby existing courses such as criminal law, contract law, or human rights are infused with content on how AI disrupts or reshapes legal principles in those areas.
Students should, for example, learn how predictive policing intersects with criminal law and procedure, how smart contracts challenge traditional notions of consensus, or how AI-based hiring systems raise novel anti-discrimination concerns in labour law. Of course, this integration should not simply be a shallow nod to technology. It requires capacity-building and training for faculty members. It is not enough to add a week of AI content to a 12-week module; the point is to shift the legal imagination of students.
Short courses offer another accessible option. These could be offered as one- or two-unit optional courses delivered over a few weeks, focusing on theory, norms, and foundational concepts rather than technical skills. Law schools could bring in guest lecturers, partner with international experts to deliver intensive sessions, ideally Africans in the diaspora who can take up adjunct positions. These short courses are cost-effective, adaptable, and can be tailored to suit specific learning objectives and resource constraints of each institution. However, they should be viewed as bridges, not substitutes, for full courses.
A third option could be to incentivize student-led initiatives. Law faculties should actively encourage and support the formation of Law and Technology Societies or clubs. These societies can serve as laboratories for stirring curiosities while also hosting guest lectures, debates, writing workshops, and moot court competitions focused on tech-related legal issues. The energy, creativity, and organisational capacity of students are valuable resources to be nurtured.
Law faculties with more institutional constraints might begin with student societies, but should proactively introduce formalized learning experiences such as specialized courses. Still, law schools must not abdicate their responsibility of reform by leaving it to students alone. Courses and societies must be undergirded by a normative vision, one that prioritises equity, and contextual responsiveness over blind technological adoption.
In a continent where advanced AI systems may soon increasingly determine who gets loans, jobs, and even bail, the absence of legal curricula that interrogate these systems should be a serious cause for concern. Africa cannot afford to wait for the rest of the world to define what AI and justice should look like. It must train a generation of jurists equipped not only to engage with these technologies but to reimagine them.
The law has always been a tool of social transformation, and now, more than ever, it must be a tool for technological justice. Law faculties that remain passive risk training students for a world that no longer exists. The goal is not just to teach law in the age of AI, but to teach it for the age of AI, and in doing so, to reclaim African voices in the making of a digital legal future.
