Ethiopia’s Supreme Court to Require Digital Filing of Key Legal Documents

Ethiopia’s Federal Supreme Court will begin requiring digital copies of key legal documents starting tomorrow, marking the first step in rolling out an electronic case management system.

Appeals, motions, and statements of defense are among the filings that must now be accompanied by scanned versions when submitted to the court’s registrar. The move follows last month’s approval of the Integrated Case Management Information System directive, which lists 45 types of documents that will gradually migrate to electronic submission as the judiciary moves toward a nationwide e-court system. While the directive sets the implementation deadline for tomorrow, most court proceedings of the regular year will commence by next week. Other federal courts are expected to adopt similar measures once their digital infrastructure is in place.

For now, physical visits to court registrars remain unavoidable. Parties must still appear in person at lower courts to file appeals, underscoring the incremental nature of the transition. To ease the burden, the Supreme Court has pledged to assist litigants unable to provide digital copies through in-house facilities.

The digital shift is the latest chapter in Ethiopia’s broader eCourt initiative. The project began in 2023 with a wide-area network built in partnership with Ethio Telecom, an over 1.8-billion-birr effort designed to resolve chronic connectivity and bandwidth issues across federal and regional courts.

The second phase introduced automatic transcription technology, developed with the Ethiopian Artificial Intelligence Institute, to address delays caused by manual note-taking. Several “smart courtrooms” have since been installed at the Supreme Court, with additional rooms planned for the Federal High Courts and the First Instance Court.

A third phase was led by the Information Network Security Administration. It centers on the creation of two central platforms: the Integrated Court Management Information System (ICMIS) and an Electronic Records Management System (ERMS), which together aim to overhaul how cases and records are processed across the judiciary.