Le boom du webinaire en temps de la COVID-19 : un...

Par Ahou Rachel Koumi Ceci constitue la troisième partie d’une série de trois. Pour la première partie, cliquez ici. La violence et la rapide propagation de...

2024 Global Health Security Conference Event

By Charlotte Galvani and Jeremy de Beer Negotiations toward a new international treaty on pandemic preparedness and response have failed to reflect a rights-based consensus...

Open Call for Case Studies

Open AIR is calling for African case studies that shed light on the following two overarching research questions: How can open collaborative innovation help businesses scale up and seize the new opportunities of a global knowledge economy? Which knowledge governance systems will best ensure that the social and economic benefits of innovation are shared inclusively across society as a whole?

WIPO Expert Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural...

By Chidi Oguamanam For the 35th time in 18years, experts have yet again gathered at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) headquarters in Geneva where...

COVID-19: My Experience, My Reflections

By Esther Adekunbi My expectations and enthusiasm to explore this beautiful land called Canada, to interact with its friendly people, to network and collaborate, was rudely...

“Making” Innovation Happen: Open AIR Hosts a Successful Workshop on the...

How the world evolves in the next decade (and beyond) may be dependent upon a new-age movement re-instilling age-old skills: the maker movement. In my ongoing research into the maker movement in Canada and South Africa (see earlier posts here and here), I recently co-hosted a workshop in Ottawa with attendees from the University of Ottawa, representatives of makerspaces in the community, and those with knowledge about makerspaces elsewhere in the world.

The absence of gender analysis in AI and its implications for...

By Akkila Thirukesan Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been an exciting tool for development across the continent of Africa. But what does AI have to do with...

WIPO 33rd IGC Session Puts Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs) on the...

The WIPO-IGC recently commenced the next installment of its deliberations for a text-based instrument that focuses on the protection of traditional cultural expressions (TCEs), pursuant to its mandate. There are two scheduled forums on TCEs beginning Feb 27-March 3 and to be completed in June 2017, which will round off the Committee’s work for the 2016-17 biennium.

La transition vers des villes et des territoires durables le role...

Par Abdelhamid Benhmade En réponse à l’invitation de Cités et Gouvernements Locaux Unis d’Afrique (CGLU Afrique), j’ai eu la possibilité d’assister à la 8èmeédition du...

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 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.”