RAG System for Legal/Regulatory Compliance Challenge

Across Africa, businesses lose billions annually due to regulatory non-compliance, not from willful violation but from inability to understand and navigate complex, often contradictory regulatory frameworks. Small businesses struggle to determine which permits they need, citizens cannot understand their tax obligations, and entrepreneurs abandon ventures faced with impenetrable bureaucratic requirements. Meanwhile, governments lose revenue and legitimacy when regulations are incomprehensible to those they govern. Developers must create RAG systems that bridge this gap by intelligently retrieving and explaining relevant regulations, providing cited guidance on compliance requirements, and democratizing access to legal information that currently requires expensive legal expertise.

The RAG System for Legal/Regulatory Compliance Challenge seeks innovative AI-powered solutions that democratize access to legal and regulatory information across Africa. This challenge addresses the critical gap between complex regulatory frameworks and the citizens and businesses who must comply with them, particularly small businesses and individuals who cannot afford legal counsel.

Participants will develop Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems that can intelligently process, understand, and explain complex regulations, tax codes, permits, and compliance requirements. The system must provide accurate, cited responses to user queries about legal obligations, required documentation, filing deadlines, and regulatory procedures across various jurisdictions and sectors.

Successful solutions will combine advanced NLP capabilities with comprehensive legal document retrieval, ensuring responses are not only accurate but also properly cited with references to specific laws, regulations, and official sources. The system should handle queries in multiple languages, understand context-specific requirements based on business type and location, and provide step-by-step guidance for compliance procedures.

We particularly value solutions that can explain complex legal language in simple terms, provide personalized compliance checklists, alert users to regulatory changes affecting them, and maintain up-to-date knowledge bases through automated document ingestion. The system should be accessible via web and mobile interfaces, with offline capabilities for frequently accessed information.