Open AIR

Jeremy de Beer, Chris Armstrong, Chidi Oguamanam et Tobias Schonwetter Date de publication : septembre 2017 Télécharger: Chapitre 16 : La propriété intellectuelle...

Jeremy de Beer, Izabella Sowa et Kristen HolmanDate de publication: septembre 2017Télécharger: Chapitre 2: Cadres d’analyse de l’innovation africaine : l’entrepreneuriat, l’économie informelle et...

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...

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 within the cluster is contributing to innovation. Further, I provided some preliminary findings on the inability of these artisans’ to keep pace with the changing technology landscape. I also found that few artisans expressed interest in joining or maintaining a membership with local trade associations due to these associations’ inability to implement their key mandate of skills development and facilitation of business for members and firms.

The World Intellectual Property Organization’s specialist committee charged with negotiating text-based instrument(s) for the effective protection of Genetic Resources (GRs), Traditional Knowledge (TK), and Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs), on Friday June 16 2017 concluded its 34th session with partial agreement on its mandate and on the fate of the committee and its work program.

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 up. The sharing economy, according to Rachel Botsman, is “an economic model based on sharing underutilized assets, from spaces to skills to stuff, for monetary or non-monetary benefits.” They often involve platforms that enable the exchange of services between peers or businesses. Arun Sundarajan explains the sharing economy somewhat differently: “What is new, in the “sharing economy,” is that you are not helping a friend for free; you are providing these services to a stranger for money.” He describes this as “crowd-based capitalism.”

This paper positions and critiques the Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network as a unique cross-regional PPP research platform. It examines, on empirical and theoretical perspectives, the elements of the Open AIR project, including its core driving factors relevant to the development gap associated with IP and knowledge governance in Africa.

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 agricultural data to decide when to plant crops, scientists use data to conduct research on pests and design disease resistant plants, and governments make policy based on land use data. As the value of agricultural data is understood, there is a growing call for governments and firms to open their agricultural data.

Agricultural data is globally recognized for its importance in addressing food insecurity. We propose a ‘data commons’, formed through a licensing model that allows farmers to benefit from the datasets to which they contribute.

Authored by: Chidi Oguamanam. Over the years, the idea of traditional knowledge has progressively unraveled as a traction point for complex issue linkages between intellectual property and, for example, genetic resources, biodiversity conservation, the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (ILCs), food, nutritional and environmental security.