Events

By Anthony Oguguo, QEScholar and PhD Student, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada The inadequacies of the global health law framework during the pandemic...

By Dana Elbashbishy On the 8th of February 2018, members of the Open African Innovation Research Partnership (Open AIR) gathered in Accra, Ghana to share research...

By Uchenna Ugwu How can “user rights” and exceptions to copyright be used most effectively to ensure access to knowledge for all? This question is...

Just last month, I had the opportunity to participate in the 13th WIPO-WTO Colloquium for Teachers of Intellectual Property held at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland from 13 to 24 June, 2016. I am beyond thankful for this scholarship and enjoyed an intense two week programme, covering eighteen substantive topics touching on all areas of intellectual property (IP) law. There were thirty-nine experts from WIPO, WTO, WHO, UNFCCC, UPOV, NGOs ,and industry who took part in the Colloquium as speakers and I was among twenty-six participants selected from approximately 160 applicants from developing countries around the world.

On 10 December 2016, as part of the RiseUp Summit in Cairo, Open AIR’s North Africa hub hosted their first Distinguished Speaker event with Ibrahim Al-Safadi, the CEO of Luminous Education. The Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) invited Al-Safadi to speak about the role of “makerspaces” to tackle unemployment and to share his experiences in how to create a makerspace that ensures that the individuals involved end up with jobs.

How the world evolves in the next decade (and beyond) may be dependent upon a new-age movement re-instilling age-old skills: the maker movement. In my ongoing research into the maker movement in Canada and South Africa (see earlier posts here and here), I recently co-hosted a workshop in Ottawa with attendees from the University of Ottawa, representatives of makerspaces in the community, and those with knowledge about makerspaces elsewhere in the world.

Is intellectual property (IP) gender neutral? No. Neither is the dominant discourse on innovation. Recognizing this bias is the first step toward remedying it.

The Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) Network recently hosted officials from South Africa’s Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation (DSTI) at the Centre...

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...

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...