Mariya leads the AfricanLII project at the University of Cape Town. Mariya is a veteran open access activist having worked on free access to law in Africa since 2004. She was involved in the set up and development of SAFLII. Since 2010 Mariya has helped build free access law portals in 13 African countries and co-founded the AfricanLII. Mariya is a technology lawyer with an LL.M in Law and Information Technology from Stockholm University.