Uganda’s judiciary eyes Artificial Intelligence (AI) in administration of justice

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The Judiciary Permanent Secretary, Dr Pius Bigirimana has revealed that the Ugandan Judiciary is ready to adopt all mechanisms including Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the administration of justice taking a leaf from Tanzania.

AI makes automatic transcription and this means that once adopted in Uganda, it will reduce the burden of work for judges who have been recording evidence and at the same time listening to submissions of parties to make decisions.

On February 28, this year, the Chief Justice of Tanzania Prof. Ibrahim Hamis Juma announced the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the country’s judicial processes focusing on court transcriptions and interpretations/translations. 

“There is no reinventing the will, if Tanzania is now doing artificial intelligence, why don’t we learn from them, we shall do so” Bigirimana said on Friday.

Bigirimana made the hint during a meeting with officials from the Southern and Eastern Africa Judicial Administrators (SEAJAA) at the Supreme Court boardroom in Kampala.

SEAJAA is a subordinate organisation of the Southern and Eastern African Chief justices’ forum whose major aim is to bring the judiciary of different countries in Africa together to share experiences in regard to administration of justice.  

Tanzania is slightly ahead of Uganda in terms of administration of justice and its case backlog has since dropped to 3% from 15% in 2015.

"There are many cases which are locked up in case backlogs and some of these cases are affecting the economy especially at commercial court in our country. Cases related to land, banking, construction and insurance have got economic implications for our countries. If we can get these cases out, the social economies of our countries will improve,” Bigirimana noted.

Prof. Gabriel Ole Elisante, the chairperson of SEAJAA said the organisation's major task is to ensure that the judiciaries on the African continent work together.

“I wish to extend our sincere appreciation to the leadership of Uganda, the chief justice of Uganda and Speaker of Parliament of Uganda. We are more than happy that we are in Uganda, the Pearl of Africa.  Today is our normal meeting of the executive committee, our main focus is sharing the experience of the partner states who are members of the organisation,” Elisante said.

Elisante emphasised the need for the African judiciaries to work together saying, “If you want to go far, you go with others and if you want to go first, you go alone. We don’t want to go first but to grow far.”

Elisante saluted the Ugandan Judiciary for modernising the courts. “I wish to advise the media community in Uganda and in Eastern and Southern Africa and Africa at large to do anything they can to communicate ethically and professionally to the community because justice dispensation is such a delicate thing that needs proper communication to the public,” Elisante said.

He said if the Ugandan Judiciary wants to keep moving in some of other platforms of ICT applications apart from the Electronic Court Case Management Information System (ECCMIS), it can benchmark from Tanzania or any of the member countries.

“In Tanzania, we started way back in 2015 modernisinisation our courts and we are now the top institution in application of ICT in terms of e-office, we are now at 99%. We are now applying an advanced electronic case management system. We are moving to translation and transcription software.  Therefore, Uganda will not struggle for benchmarking on this,” he said.

Elisante, however, said they are faced with a challenge of language barrier given that some of the countries are French speaking.

“We have a challenge of language barrier because some of the countries are French speaking and that’s why we are trying to promote Swahili to be a powerful African language,” he said.

Elisante said the SEAJAA will be launched today before the team heads to Kenya for talks.