Blog Post

By Ghati Nyehita My ongoing Open AIR, Queen Elizabeth Scholar - Advanced Scholars (QES-AS), research project discusses the extent which South Africa’s copyright and design laws...

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.”

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...

Par Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou Au cours de mon séjour de recherche, je me suis intéressé à la place réservée aux femmes au sein...

The Open AIR network seeks to bring, among other things, a gendered perspective to our research. We are exploring the nexus between feminist literature, intellectual property, information technology, and innovation; connecting these approaches into the network’s future priorities.

Solutions to some of society’s most important challenges require the right regulatory environment to drive innovation. Examples include pioneering models for access to educational...

By Anthony Oguguo, QEScholar and PhD Student, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada The inadequacies of the global health law framework during the pandemic...

By Esther Ekong Despite the very significant role women entrepreneurs in developing countries play, their businesses lack financial security, which in turn stymies their economic growth. This is...

Makerspaces are places where innovators gather together to develop new ideas, technologies and entrepreneurial opportunities. The concept of sharing not only space but also tools and equipment is gaining popularity in many countries. Canada is home to several makerspaces ranging from hackerspaces, to fab labs, to informal studio spaces where people can create, invent, and learn. Some are run for profit, some are non-profit, and some are run by individuals or larger institutions.

This is the first in a series of blog posts highlighting Open AIR’s latest working paper, A Framework for Assessing Technology Hubs in Africa, which will soon be published in the New York University Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law. This is the first paper to offer a framework for systematically describing and assessing the emergence of high technology hubs throughout Africa.