Blog Post

Khadiga Hassan The Department of Science and Innovation and the South African National Research Foundation (DSI/NRF) Trilateral Chair in Transformative Innovation, the 4IR and Sustainable...

When SSHRC and IDRC awarded sizeable, prestigious grants to support Open AIR in its third phase of research, the Network’s leadership promptly organized a face-to-face meeting at its North African Hub, the American University of Cairo. While a great strength of Open AIR is its ability to coordinate its research and administrative tasks remotely across its various hubs, personal meetings are invaluable when the Network needs to deal with specific overarching strategic issues.

By Vipal Jain Digital agricultural research is transforming the way crops are developed. New tools can speed up the ability to produce crops with higher...

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 Abdelhamid Benhmade En Octobre 2020, l’Afrique du Sud et l’Inde ont proposé aux États membres de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC) de suspendre les...

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...

By Sileshi Hirko Putting Africa at the Forefront in Digital Economies Central to the flourishing digital economies, the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the...

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...

Makerspaces are places where innovators gather together to develop new ideas, technologies and entrepreneurial opportunities. The concept of sharing not only space but also tools and equipment is gaining popularity in many countries. Canada is home to several makerspaces ranging from hackerspaces, to fab labs, to informal studio spaces where people can create, invent, and learn. Some are run for profit, some are non-profit, and some are run by individuals or larger institutions.

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.