Justice in my pocket? How can the use of a justice chatbot which is accessible on a mobile phone enable access to justice for women in Dar es Salaam?

Access to justice remains a global challenge, disproportionately affecting certain social groups, such as women, individuals with low income, and those with limited education. Despite technological advances, there is little research on how technology can be leveraged to enable access to justice services for underserved communities in sub-Saharan Africa. In Tanzania, women encounter a web of cultural, financial and social barriers when attempting to identify and resolve justice issues they encounter in their daily lives, further excluding them from both the formal and informal justice system and their remedies. This thesis contends that technology presents an opportunity to dismantle these barriers, setting a foundation for inclusive, user-centered, and accountable justice technology.

This thesis adopts an inter-disciplinary approach, integrating scholarship in law, technology, and development studies, to explore how technology can enable access to justice for women in Dar es Salaam. This research is conducted across three studies. The first study involved four focus groups with 48 women in Dar es Salaam to identify their priority justice issues, their justice pathways and their use of mobile phones in their daily lives. The second study was a large-scale quantitative study with 428 women in Dar es Salaam, designed to test a conceptual framework, the Justice Technology Acceptance Model, that identifies the barriers and drivers influencing the adoption of a mobile phone-based justice technology tool. Finally, the third study, involved the development and testing of a prototype justice chatbot which provides guidance on inheritance disputes and is accessible via a mobile phone.

This thesis contributes to knowledge in the fields of access to justice, justice technology, technology for development, interdisciplinary research, legal empowerment and inclusive artificial intelligence. It bridges the gap between theory and practice by pioneering an innovative justice pathway. This research aims to contribute to transformation in the justice sector, offering women a simple, meaningful and affordable tool to access justice. This thesis concludes that the chatbot developed in this thesis, which is trained on a legal dataset, has the potential to increase women’s legal capability by providing them with accessible and reliable information to navigate complex justice issues with greater autonomy and confidence. Ultimately, that it promotes an enabling environment where women can shape the lives they chose to lead, fostering individual agency and contributing to broader systemic change within the justice sector.