Blog Post

By Philda Maiga Trade is considered an important engine for growth. Studies have shown that trade can dramatically improve women’s lives, create jobs, and increase...

By Toni Valenti On Thursday, March 28th, Open AIR attended the Indigenous Data Sovereignty panel at the Shifting Horizons research data conference at the University of Ottawa....

Earlier this year, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a two-day workshop on “Supporting Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Use the Intellectual Property System in Their Competitive Strategy” at the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in Cairo, Egypt, which some of our Open AIR NERG members attended. The goal of this meeting was to discuss how to encourage young innovators to protect their inventions by patenting them at the Egyptian Patent Office. The workshop had vibrant and sometimes heated discussions between these innovators and government officials regarding many of the obstacles faced in the patenting process in Egypt.

So what is the Otigba Computer Village? Oyelaran-Oyeyinka in 2006 described it as the biggest ICT hub of West Africa – perhaps the biggest ICT market in all of Africa – because of the size and the volume of business activities carried out on a daily basis within the cluster. The research I have been conducting looks at the knowledge dynamics at play in the informal ICT businesses in the cluster, with a view to understanding how these dynamics drive informal enterprises’ innovation and scaling-up. While other studies of the cluster have evaluated the size and capacity of the cluster, the evolution of the cluster, mode of operation, performance, sustainability and constraints, there are no studies looking at how the local businesses identify new and useful knowledge. With over 5000 businesses in the cluster, there is bound to be knowledge exchange either through spillover or conscious transfer. How is this happening?

Photo credit: Image by Ville Oksanen via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) By Chidi Oguamanam, cross-posted from ABS Canada. After six days of deliberations (June 24-29, 2018) to secure...

Please note that this call for applications has now expired.  Applications are not being accepted at this time. Funding to conduct research on gender and...

Open AIR's Canada hub has been awarded a prestigious multimillion dollar Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. Professors Jeremy de Beer and Chidi Oguamanam, both from the Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa, have been awarded a grant to expand the Open AIR network and to conduct further research.

Par Ahou Rachel Koumi et Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou Ceci constitue la deuxième partie d’une série de trois. Pour la première partie, cliquez ici. La...

By Jeremy de Beer and Yvonne Ndelle The recent conference hosted by the Canada Africa Parliamentary Association (CAAF) served as a pivotal platform for discussing...

By: Nagla Rizk AI and Gender in Africa The original version of this essay was written as a section in a paper titled “Integrating Africa...