Open AIR Presents at Fourth Global Congress on IP and the...

By Victor Nzomo In the midst of two decades of TRIPS and three decades of openness, more than 400 delegates from over 50 countries converged...

Reliving the “Transforming Africa: Innovating Our Way Towards Sustainability” 2024 Conference

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...

In pursuit of a Coalition of the African Innovation Agencies: Doing...

Caroline Wanjiru Muchiri On Friday 1st March 2024, a group of individuals drawn from various sectors gathered at the University of Johannesburg Business School to...

“Making” Innovation Happen: Open AIR Hosts a Successful Workshop on the...

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.

June Open AIR Network Meeting in Cairo

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.

Waiting for An Inclusive Pathogen Access And Benefit Sharing Policy

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...

The Many Faces of Scholarly Communications

By Nagham El Houssamy The FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute was held at the University of California San Diego from 31 July until 4 August 2017....

Strengthening Canada-Africa Relations: What Way Forward?

By Jeremy de Beer and Yvonne Ndelle The recent conference hosted by the Canada Africa Parliamentary Association (CAAF) served as a pivotal platform for discussing...

Prof. Osei-Tutu speaks at the University of Ottawa

Too often, scholarly work and debates relating to Intellectual Property (IP) have focused on the protection and profits of the IP holder, as opposed to promoting open-access and the broader interests of the community. In her talk at the University of Ottawa on February 9th, Professor Janewa Osei-Tutu suggested we readjust the lens through which IP innovation is examined, using human development as the standard.

Open AIR Students Present at Carleton’s Institute of African Studies

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.