Technology and Transitional Justice in Africa – Arabic

This study interrogates the role of technology in transitional justice in Africa. It assesses existing policies and practices and concludes with recommendations to the African Union, the African Union's member states, civil society, and innovators plus strategic partners.

With regard to norms and policies, under Agenda 2063, the African Union has invested significantly in articulating transitional justice and technology as key pillars for the continent's vision of inclusive and sustainable development. The African Union Transitional Justice Policy provides guidance that societies confronted by legacies of mass violations can adopt, in order to turn their trajectories towards democratic and socio-economic transformation.

For the technological role, the African Union has developed instruments on key themes, such as digital transformation, data protection, cybersecurity, the unfolding realities of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Therefore, this study explores how transitional justice and technology intersect within the wider goal of inclusive and sustainable development.

This exploration concludes that the implementation roadmaps for the African Union Transitional Justice Policy require incorporation of the normative guidance emerging from specialised African Union instruments on technology. The 2025 – 2029 implementation roadmap should also speak to the education of stakeholders on the benefits and challenges brought about by the use of technology in transitional justice.

In extracting lessons from experiences in Africa and around the world, this study recognises that technology can positively impact transitional justice by making processes data driven, evidence based, efficient, and participatory. Conversely, experience also reveals negative impacts that include entrenching or creating marginalisation, exclusion, and discrimination, as well as enabling perpetration of atrocities and blurring of the lines of accountability.

Finally, the study provides recommendations to a variety of stakeholders to ensure that the inclusion of technology in transitional justice harnesses transformative benefits and avoids potential harms. The African Union should take the lead in reconciling its principles on transitional justice with those it has articulated on the use of technology. This will ensure that the implementation of its transitional justice policy by member states is anchored in important elements, such as data protection, cybersecurity, and rights-based approaches to the deployment and regulation of technological innovations in transitional justice.