What is it
AKOMA NTOSO 2.0 Schema
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Goal
This document is meant to provide the empirical data and analytical considerations that will then be used in the “Modificatory Provisions” chapter of the “Practical Drafting Guidelines for Africa”. It is on one hand a working document meant to enlist the comments and notes of parliamentary clerks, drafting officers and scholars. On the other hand it is a first categorisation of the different kind of modificatory provisions that aims at making the amending and consolidation of legislation a precise and effective process.
We would also like to become a tool that brings together practitioners and researchers in the field of legal drafting in order to build a community of users that could become the nucleus of an African Network of Excellence that will improve the quality of drafting, the efficacy of the legislative process and the usability of the legal material in view of the introduction of the ICTs in the legislative process.
Practical Drafting Guidelines for Africa will define a set of shared principles and best practices in drafting, structuring, naming and referencing legislation. The Guidelines will cover the different legislative traditions and are also aimed at promoting a convergence of practices that can be quite helpful in supporting the harmonisation efforts of the Pan African Parliaments.
The Guidelines will then be followed by “Legal Drafting Code for Africa” that will present formalised rules for the legal language, uniform principles for structuring the document, common method to manage cross references and modifications over time.
This document is meant to achieve a shared theoretical understanding of “Legal Modifications” that is, at the same time, rooted in the specificities of the different legislative traditions and actual practices of Africa legislatures. This first version has been developed based on the Italian experiences gained through several Legislative Drafting and Legislative Informatics application research projects. Nevertheless, the author has performed a comparative law analysis on the base of eleven African countries' documents for a total of 250 documents (Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda) to further test methodology and approach in the African context. This is only a starting point without any presumption of completeness or correctness, but with the aim to produce a document that can better foster and structure a productive discussion on the thematic. It is expected that the integrations, corrections and refinements coming from the colleagues and practitioners will make it really representative of the African legislative traditions.
NOTICE:
Despite all our efforts, some of the examples provided come from Italy. They are supposed to be replaced, though the contribution of parliaments and scholars with examples coming from the Africa legislation. They are meant to provide examples and work as a signpost for examples to be found.