admin
Farirai Machivenyika
Senior Reporter
LAWYERS to African Parliaments should assist their legislatures in analysing international agreements and treaties, especially those of an economic nature, to ensure they benefit people, the Speaker of Parliament, Advocate Jacob Mudenda, said yesterday.
In his keynote address to the Africa Colloquium of Legal Counsels of Parliaments, which ends in Victoria Falls today, Adv Mudenda said beyond attending to the usual law-making processes, parliamentary lawyers have a heavy responsibility in assisting African legislatures in the perspicacious analysis of international agreements and treaties, especially those that are of an economic nature.
“Sometimes, some of these agreements and treaties are skewed against African interests. For example, foreign companies agree to extract crude oil from an African country and insert a clause indicating that the oil will be refined in the investor’s country of origin only to sell the refined oil as petrol or diesel at high prices, much to the chagrin of the local citizenry. This is economic colonialism,” he said.
Parliamentary lawyers should rally their legal experiences and save Africa from such economic imperialism by ensuring that international agreements and treaties vouch for Africa’s resources’ value addition and beneficiation in the spirit of Agenda 2063 and the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
“Furthermore, the Colloquium should take concrete measures on how to have cutting edge interventions so that African parliaments can harmonise trade laws, immigration and customs laws as well as information communication technology legislation so as to boost the movement of goods and services within Africa. Africa must leverage on digital technologies in these legislative harmonisation efforts.”
Adv Mudenda called on the lawyers to familiarise themselves with latest technological changes that can affect the promulgation of laws.
Counsels to parliaments, he said, need to make sure they are schooled in the phenomenon of artificial intelligence, which is the development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, whereby machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing as tools in the digitalised law-making matrix could be applied.
The use of data analytics and algorithms for predictability of the legal impact of legislation, were measures that commanded attention for counsels to Parliaments.
Ironically, added Adv Mudenda, the same application of AI had to be deployed responsibly and ethically in accordance with moral principles, society values and inalienable human rights.
“It is in that context that counsels to parliaments should appreciate and extol innovation in law making so long as cognisance is taken of the possibility of the misuse of AI application in the process,” he said.
leeroy