Blog Post

In the first week of April 2016, the Open African Innovation Research and Training (Open AIR) network held a three-day workshop at our Nairobi hub, Strathmore University. The workshop included the Open AIR team and was primarily organized to bring together all the successful case study researchers in order to review, refine, and brainstorm about their upcoming research. There was also significant activity on Twitter, which can be read about here. All the case studies that Open AIR is funding fall under at least one of our major research themes: high technology hubs, informal sector innovation, indigenous entrepreneurship, and metrics and policies.

By Adedamola Adediji It’s a flattened world! An offshoot of this is that political discourse, commercial transactions, and economic activities have mainly moved online. This...

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 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 Mnena Abuku Women in Africa have faced a diversity of struggles in their efforts toward sustainable development. This is largely because globalisation has brought more burdens upon...

By Lilian Nantume* The education and dissemination of knowledge about Intellectual Property Rights for small women-owned businesses in Uganda is still in its infancy. Unfortunately,...

Hani Morsi, an Open AIR Post-Doctoral fellow at the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) in Cairo, gave a seminar last week entitled “Beyond openness: Investigating the success factors of open approaches to collaboration and innovation”. This was part of the Brown Bag seminar series of AUC’s School of Business.

By Chris Armstrong Over the course of two days last week, 16-17 February, I and Open AIR colleague Nan Warner participated in the online "Kick-off...

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.

By Jeremy Baarbé (Picture: courtesy of Drawnalism) Open data has the potential to end global hunger. Farmers, government ministers, NGOs, and private firms gathered to collaborate...