Common Misconceptions of Patents in Egypt
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.
Highlighting Inclusion of Marginalized Voices at International Conferences: A NERG’s experience
By Nicole Tumaine
Over the past four months, I have had the privilege of attending three international conferences as a panelist thanks to the generous...
MENA Observatory on Responsible AI
Open AIR’s North African hub, The Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at the American University in Cairo’s Onsi Sawiris School of Business,...
Police Power Doctrine and Security of Investment: Balancing Regulation with Innovation
By Dr. Otitodiri Ogadinma OnyemaQES Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Law, Open AIR
In October, 2025, I had the privilege of presenting my research at the International Conference...
Open Data and Ownership at the Global Open Data for Agriculture...
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...
Professor Carys Craig Infuses the Open Access Movement with Feminism at...
Is intellectual property (IP) gender neutral? No. Neither is the dominant discourse on innovation. Recognizing this bias is the first step toward remedying it.
Open AIR Case Study Nairobi Workshop
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.
Open AIR at TFi4SD Africa
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...
Historic Gathering of Africa’s Open Science Hardware (OSH) Innovators – the...
By Chris Armstrong
Open AIR was privileged to be a supporting partner of the inaugural AfricaOSH Summit, held 13-15 April 2018 at the Kumasi Hive...
Beating the Odds: NERG Virtual Brownbag Presentations Kick-Off
The Open AIR New Emerging Researchers Group (NERG), under the leadership of Esther Ekong and Adel Osama, organized a virtual meet-up series, which kicked...












