SA legal startup Baobab named as Southern African winner of HiiL challenge

SA legal startup Baobab has been named the Southern Africa winner of justice accelerator The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law’s s (HiiL) annual Innovating Justice Challenge. The news was revealed yesterday in a press release by HiiL.

The winner was decided at a special pitching event held last Tuesday (4 September) at Sandton Convention Centre, by a panel of expert judges from the fields of law and innovation.

Baobab.law was founded by Khokela Daula and Guy Stern. The two are looking to remove barriers to entry for legal assistance by providing information DIY legal solutions in the form of video tutorials that can speed up process of resolving legal matters. Videos are recorded with professional lawyers and available in multiple local languages.

Stern told Ventureburn last month that the inspiration behind the startup came about at a Global Legal Hackathon which took place at the Tshimologong Precinct in February and was organised by HiiL.

Read more: This is how SA’s 2018 HiiL finalists are using tech to serve justice in the country
Read more: 33 African startups make it into 2018 Innovating Justice Challenge finals

In a statement yesterday, the judges said they were impressed with the vision and passion of the co-founders for their startup, and also with the rapid development of content.

“Our challenge was to find a solution that would bring access to justice to millions,” says Stern. “A solution that is going to impact millions needs to have a few key ingredients: it needs to be 100% free to use, accessible in many languages on social multiple channels and viral in nature. Video checks all of these boxes.”

HiiL judges said they were impressed with the vision and passion of the Baobab co-founders

As a proof of concept, the team demonstrated their active Facebook page which has seen viral growth with over 10 000 video views in the past few weeks and a growing community including the participating firms who share the videos around.

“It’s humbling and overwhelming to see the support the law firms have given us,” added Daula.

The pair say that they have already begun discussing content partnerships and investment opportunities that have arisen as a result of the challenge.

Zimbabwean, Gauteng startup runners up

Second place in the regional finals went to Zimbabwe’s PhoenixCMS, a low cost case management service, designed to help human rights organisations track important information and improve reporting of rights abuses around the country.

In third place, Masenze Strategic Advisors is a Gauteng rights awareness platform working on innovative ways to improve legal education for underserved communities.

Judges also gave a special mention to Buyisa Soul and Spiritual Centre from Alexandra, a group of traditional healers who currently run regular mediation and dispute resolution courts within the township and are looking to scale their work into other geographical areas.

“All of our finalists demonstrated incredible new ideas for providing access to justice services in cost effective, sustainable and scaleable ways,” said Ellen Tacoma, Director of the HiiL Justice Accelerator in The Netherlands.

“And their commitment to principles of justice as a human right is truly humbling. They’ve set the bar exceptionally high for our other regional finals in Nairobi, Kampala, Lagos, Dhaka and The Netherlands over the coming month.”

Following the conclusion of the regional finals around the world, HiiL will invite selected startups and innovators to join its Justice Accelerator programme, through which it supports fledgling organisations with seed funding and development assistance.

Featured image: Baobab founders Guy Stern (left) and Khokela Daula (right), pictured with Ellen Tacoma HiiL’s justice accelerator director