The Festival began as an idea to
scale the policy conversations the
Hub was hosting in Kenya in 2019. Omidyar Network
believed in the idea and gave seed
money to host the inaugural edition in 2020. That year the Lawyers Hub convened
policymakers, academia and legal-tech organisations from 20+
countries
within the African
Continent, curated rapid tech solutions under the Global Legal
Hackathon
and
developed key
policy briefs for the African Continent on Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy &
Digital
Identity, Tech and Migration, and Taxing the Digital Economy.
Themed Digital Policy for economic growth in 2021, the virtual
edition
hosted 7500 law and
tech professionals attend the 5 summits of the festival on Data Protection and
Digital
Identity, Artificial Intelligence, Internet Governance and moderation, Crypto
Regulation
and
Digital Currencies Summit, Digital access and Infrastructure Summit. The festival
hosted
masterclasses and keynotes on zoom, panel sessions on twitter spaces and a virtual
concert
on YouTube.
The Festival was officially opened by the ICT Minister in Kenya
flagged off by the Data
Commissioner Mauritius and the regional director International
Telecommunications Union and
representative to the African Union. The festival ended in dance,
with
the Africa Digital
Rights concert themed on Privacy. The Festival was made possible by the support of
Omidyar
Network, ICANN, Mozilla, Safaricom, Amnesty International Kenya, CIPESA, APC,
Internews
and
the International Commission of Jurists.