Scope

The “Legislative Drafting Guidelines for Africa” aim at providing a set of principles and best practices for drafting both primary and secondary legislation.

The Guidelines promote a commitment to improving the quality of lawmaking and to achieving simplicity, clarity and consistency in the laws of African parliaments.

The Guidelines are neither binding nor exhaustive, and are not intended to override the legislative conventions and official drafting manuals of the respective countries. They can, however, promote a convergence of practices beneficial for the harmonisation of law in Africa. They are intended to serve as a reference for all bodies involved in the process of drafting legislation in Africa.

It is hoped that the Guidelines will assist all those involved, in any way, in drafting legislation within the institutions of the African Union. The Guidelines aim to make African legislation as clear, simple, concise and understandable as possible. They provide criteria against which the drafting of legislation may be checked, to enable citizens to understand the objectives of the laws and the means to achieve them, but also to ensure that the laws can be more easily processed by information and communication technologies.