Blog Post

By Esther Adekunbi Gender equality is a very important issue in today’s world, while also a fraught debate. Gender equality can be achieved when men and women...

By Bertha Vallejo I am an Open AIR QES Fellow with the University of Johannesburg, currently in The Netherlands, due to COVID-19/coronavirus. I have expertise...

By Eslam Shaaban In March 2018, the African Continent Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA) was unveiled as the world’s largest free trade area since the creation...

In the recently concluded ‘African Ministerial Conference: Intellectual Property for an Emerging Africa’ organized in part by WIPO (here), one cannot help but think that all roads leading to creativity and innovation are paved with intellectual property (IP) laws and institutions. Put differently, the level of creativity and innovation in a society is dependent solely on how we tinker with and enforce IP laws. This ‘IP parochialism’, as I call it, is manifest in the conference program. Of course, the response would be that the conference was solely about IP and as such there was no need to look beyond IP. This is an erroneous view.

By Pamela Mreji Since the beginning of time, women and men inventors and entrepreneurs have transformed our world through the power of their imagination and...

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...

By Victor Nzomo In the midst of two decades of TRIPS and three decades of openness, more than 400 delegates from over 50 countries converged...

By Charlene Tsitsi Musiza There have been many efforts to empower women, but rural women continue to face unique socio-economic challenges. A suggested approach to...

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.

In October 2010, Yoweri Museveni, the President of Uganda, recorded a rap song titled: "Do You Want Another Rap?" as part of his re-election campaign to capture the imagination of young voters. The song was a huge success and may have played a part in his reelection. When Museveni applied for a copyright registration of the song, however, members of the Ankole community filed an objection stating that the song was derived from Ankole folklore. While the Registrar of Copyrights in Uganda eventually allowed Museveni's copyright application for registration, this case triggered Dr. Anthony Conrad K. Kakooza's interest in the area of traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) and whether TCEs should be recognized within the domain of intellectual property (IP) law.