We tend to focus on the US and UK – understandably – but there’s plenty of legal tech going on worldwide. In this case, Afriwise, Africa’s ‘fastest-growing legal intelligence platform’, is buying LawExplorer, the South Africa-based regulatory monitoring and analysis business.
As they explained, this is a move to build a major legal data and intelligence platform focused on the African continent.
‘This landmark deal redefines the legal and regulatory intelligence landscape across Africa, combining Afriwise’s unrivalled continental coverage and legal depth with LawExplorer’s long-standing expertise in actionable regulatory tracking, starting with a major expansion of capabilities in South Africa,’ they said.
Steven De Backer, CEO and Founder of Afriwise – who is based in Belgium – commented: ‘With this move, we firmly establish Afriwise as the definitive one-stop platform for legal and regulatory intelligence in Africa, while at the same time gaining a powerful foothold in the South African legal market.
‘By integrating LawExplorer’s flagship Sentinel platform, trusted for over two decades for its precision and editorial rigour, we’re adding deep regulatory monitoring capabilities to our multi-country legal intelligence.’
Is this a big deal?
We don’t see a lot of Africa-focused legal tech M&A deals, (in fact, AL can’t remember the last one…), so this is rare in that respect. Africa is also probably one of the few major regional markets where legal data has not been mostly consolidated by one of the larger legal research giants. So, the move is interesting in that respect also as it looks like doing this is Afriwise’s goal – and it’s well on the way to achieving this. Finally, as noted above, it underlines that there is plenty going on in the legal tech world beyond the usual regional focus areas.
You can find more about Afriwise here.
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