Blog Post

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.

By Ghazaleh Jerban I was so excited to be travelling to South Africa as an Open AIR NERG and QEScholar, in the middle of Canada’s notorious winter...

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?

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...

By Erika Kraemer-Mbula The 2018 Annual Economic Summit, was organised by the Global Economic Institute in partnership with the Government of the Canary Islands. It...

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 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...

By Chris Armstrong The African European Maker Innovation Ecosystem (mAkE) Project, of which Open AIR is part, has launched its Open Catalogue of Business Models (OCBM)....

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...

On 10 June 2015, the Agreement establishing a Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) was signed in Egypt bringing together 26 African countries from three major regional blocs: the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Following the signing, the current phase of the TFTA negotiations are meant to cover five agenda items: trade in services, cooperation in trade and development, competition policy, intellectual property (IP) rights, and cross-border investment. The fourth of those five issues was the subject of the second Open AIR East Africa Distinguished Speaker Series presentation by Dr. Henry Kibet Mutai.