Blog Post

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...

Researchers from the Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network have been awarded $2.5 million CAD through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Partnership Grants program...

First Stop, the American University in Cairo By the AUC New and Emerging Research Group and Meika Ellis Under the masterful guidance of our North African...

Back in October 2016, three of our Open AIR Research Fellows had the unique and rewarding opportunity to participate in the Second Annual Institute of African Studies Undergraduate Research Conference at Carleton University’s Institute of African Studies. Undergraduate researchers from across the globe presented their research findings on a wide breadth of topics – from fiction describing Nigerian culture, to professional development for youth in South Africa, to political structures that influenced the welfare state in Tanzania and Kenya.

Par Abdelhamid Benhmade Enfin, une nouvelle proposition sur la vaccination gratuite et universelle est en discussion à l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC). L'Afrique du Sud,...

Par Aboubacry Kane Le secteur informel ignoré par le plan de relance économique La pandémie du Covid-19 continue toujours de sévir dans le monde. Après plusieurs...

This fall, two Open AIR New and Emerging Researchers Uchenna Ugwu and Sileshi Hirko successfully defended their PhD theses at the University of Ottawa. Food...

With the world on edge as the COVID-19 crisis progresses, the scientific community has sprung into gear in search of an effective treatment. Research and Development (R&D) is progressing at unprecedented speeds. Amidst this rapid development, traditional knowledge plays a significant role in scientific endeavours. Through traditional knowledge, medical researchers can gain guidance and inspiration and bypass prolonged and expensive scatter-gun approaches to R&D.

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 Eslam Shaaban Innovators, especially in the start-up stage, are facing the problem of financing their projects. In Egypt, there is great potential to develop...