Appruve Emerges Winner of 2019 Innovating Justice Challenge For West Africa – Proshareng

Appruve a financial identity infrastructure that enables financial services to verify and onboard the identities of individuals and businesses, emerged the winner of the 2019 Innovating Justice Challenge West African finals. 

Organized by The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, the Innovating Justice Challenge is a competition designed to find the next generation of justice innovations.

The next generation of innovators would be discovered through leveraging technology, innovation, justice needs, data and partnerships.

The 2019 edition featured Seven (7) finalists, Liliane, Africlaim, Community Peace Initiative, Vesicash, The Flemer Project, Sunulex and Appruve.

Africlaim, an innovator, focused on securing financial and non-financial compensation for African airline passengers involved in flight disruptions, including cancellations, delays, and overbooking, clinched the second position at the event.

Also, the Flemer Project Initiative, an innovator seeking to facilitate the decongestion of Nigerian prisons, using an incentive-based volunteer system enabled by technology, to provide active legal representation for indigent pretrial detainees came third at the pitch event

The Consul-General of the Kingdom of Netherlands to Nigeria, Lagos Consulate, Mr. Jan van Weijen, in his welcome address said the 2019 West African regional finals featured participants from Nigeria, Ghana, Benin Republic and Senegal.

Mr. Weijen believed the Regional Finals was an opportunity to promote innovators that can address the challenges of the judicial system in Africa.

He believed innovation was critical to improving access to justice and strengthening the judicial system.

The Hub and Franchise Manager, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, Mr. Connor Sattely giving insight into the Innovating Justice Challenge Regional Finals,  said the four areas considered for selecting the three winners of the challenge include the following:

• Innovative justice initiatives that can make a significant social impact

• Ventures that have a business model that enables them to become financially sustainable

• Initiatives that have a business model and the ambition to scale across a country or internationally

• Ventures led by a motivated and strong team that includes experienced and inspiring founders

Sattely informed guests that Appruve and Africlaim the first and second winners at the event will attend the Justice Entrepreneurship School & Innovating Justice Forum at the Peace Palace, The Hague, Netherlands.

Speaking further, Sattely listed other benefits for the 3 winners at the 2019 Innovating Justice Challenge, which are; An average of 6 months business development assistance (local+global), global connections to the justice innovation movement and an average of N6m into each startup.

According to Connor Sattely, as at 2018, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, through its Innovating Justice Challenge, has supported 51 innovators who have reached 2.4m people across 24 countries.

Since 2011 HIIL with strong partnerships has supported 90 justice innovations across the globe.

The Keynote speaker at the event and Chairman of the Lagos State Judiciary Small Claims Court Committee, Hon. Justice Yetunde Adesanya, highlighted the following as some of the benefits of courts in the state, namely;

• Decongestion of  Court Cases at the Lagos High Court

•             Improving the Ease of Doing Business Ranking  of Nigeria

•             Creating an enabling environment for businesses in Lagos

•             Enhancing economic activities in Lagos State, Nigeria’s economic capital

•             Speedy resolution of cases for small businesses within the timeline of 60 days

•             Improving the process of enforcing contracts

The event featured panel sessions that discussed “Justice reform-perspectives from the bar” and “Impact Investment, a tool to finance justice innovation.”

It also had a fireside conversation on making the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs a Nigerian reality with Ijeoma Nwafor, the Nigeria Country Representative of HiiL engaging Ms. Solape Hammond, Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on SDGs.

PROSHARENG