Les Fablabs en Afrique : une utopie à l’épreuve des réalités locales
By Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou Du 6 au 10 mai 2018, la ville de Dakar accueillait le Festival Afropixel 6 sur la thématique « Utopies non-alignées : Imaginaires…
DIY Biology in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges for Open Science
Authored by: Vipal Jain and Jeremy de Beer Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Biology, also known as biohacking, puts innovation into the hands of the citizens and provides…
Historic Gathering of Africa’s Open Science Hardware (OSH) Innovators – the AfricaOSH Summit, Kumasi, Ghana
By Chris Armstrong Open AIR was privileged to be a supporting partner of the inaugural AfricaOSH Summit, held 13-15 April 2018 at the Kumasi Hive innovation…
WIPO Expert Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions Takes Another Look at Draft Genetic Resources Text in 2018
By Chidi Oguamanam For the 35th time in 18years, experts have yet again gathered at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) headquarters in Geneva…
Nigerian National Workshop on Research Grant Writing and Administration
By Nan Warner A number of senior members of the Open AIR Network participated in the Nigerian National Workshop on Research Grant Writing and Administration,…
Open AIR NERGs successfully defend PhD theses
This fall, two Open AIR New and Emerging Researchers Uchenna Ugwu and Sileshi Hirko successfully defended their PhD theses at the University of Ottawa. Food Security…
Reconciling Intellectual Property Rights and African Development: The Right to Development Conference Charts the Way Forward
By Uchenna Felicia Ugwu In September 2017, the Thabo Mbeki Foundation and the Centre for Human Rights (CHR), Faculty of Law University of Pretoria gathered together…
Egypt’s New Investment Law: Creating Better Opportunities for Small Businesses?
By Sarah El Saeed The Egyptian Government has begun in pushing through a fiscal and monetary reform plan that includes various unpopular austerity measures. In…
Financing of Innovation
By Eslam Shaaban For decades, Kodak was a global giant in the photography industry all over the world. Over the past decade, however, their business gradually…
Open AIR's Sileshi Hirko wins competitive grant
Mr. Sileshi Hirko, a PhD candidate in the Common Law Section of the University of Ottawa, has won the Civil Society Scholars Award (CSSA). CSSA is a research grant…
The Many Faces of Scholarly Communications
By Nagham El Houssamy The FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute was held at the University of California San Diego from 31 July until 4 August 2017. This…
Open AIR Expansion into Morocco
By Sara Yassine Over the past six months, the Research Laboratory Entrepreneurship and Management of Organizations (LABO-EMO) and Open AIR have been looking at…
Africa’s Maker Movement: An Overview of Ongoing Research
Makerspaces are places where people gather to build projects, learn new technologies, and develop entrepreneurial opportunities. Open AIR is conducting research…
Open Data Brings Farmers and Researchers Together
How can farmers and researchers use open data to work together for food security? Open data and other forms of open access to knowledge help facilitate these re…
Canada’s 2017 Copyright Review: Reflections on the Congress 2017
By Sileshi Hirko Introduction The last week of May 2017 was a week of great academic activity in Canada, Congress 2017. This event is run by the Federation for…
Apply Now: Funding for Research on Gender and Innovation in Africa
Funding to conduct research on gender and innovation in Africa is now available. Open AIR invites proposals for short-term research projects that address our research…
Open AIR NERG presents at Windsor Symposium on Copyright User Rights and Access to Justice
By Uchenna Ugwu How can “user rights” and exceptions to copyright be used most effectively to ensure access to knowledge for all? This question is a very…
Strengthening innovation support systems at Ghana’s Suame Magazine
In my previous blog on skills development and innovation at Ghana’s Suame Magazine, I showed how the high level of collaboration and sharing of knowledge and skills…
WIPO Special Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Traditional Cultural Expression Shies Away from Consolidating its Mandate but Agrees on Lack of Indigenous Participation
The World Intellectual Property Organization’s specialist committee charged with negotiating text-based instrument(s) for the effective protection of Genetic Resources…
Exploring Crowd-Based Capitalism in Africa’s Sharing Economy
The sharing economy has been growing at an ever-accelerating pace throughout the world as peer-to-peer networks and collaborative company models continue to pop…
Open Data's Effect on Food Security
Agricultural data is a vital resource in the effort to address food insecurity. This data is used across the food-production chain. For example, farmers rely on…
Innovation by “makers” in South Africa’s Gauteng Province
The “Makers” who come together to tinker and hack in the maker collectives of South Africa’s Gauteng Province display a wide range of innovation practices,…
Challenging the Meaning of Innovation: Lessons from Refugee-Founded Organizations in Kampala
There is often a limited and constricted view of African innovation, especially when it comes to refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). While there is…
Mobile Innovation as the Cornerstone of Socio-economic Development in Kenya
Over the past few years, Kenya’s innovation scene has come to the limelight, resulting in some naming the country as the technology hub of Africa. Some of the…