Events

Looking back at Open AIR’s ‘Making’ Innovation Happen roundtable By Sean Boots In mid August, Open AIR hosted a roundtable discussion on makerspaces and innovation hubs in...

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...

Enthusiasts and researchers gathered on Friday, March 3, 2017 to share research on the growing African maker movement. The workshop was hosted at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa.

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.

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...

Researchers from the Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network have been awarded $2.5 million CAD through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Partnership Grants program...

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...

The intellectual property system is a crucial part of economic policymaking worldwide. It affects matters of profound importance, including health, education, nutrition, culture, science, technology and innovation policy. One might assume, therefore, that the global governance of intellectual property rights rests on a solid foundation of evidence. Think again. For over a century, intellectual property policy has been based largely on theoretical assumptions and political lobbying.

The Advancement of Training and Research for Intellectual Property (ATRIP) Conference provides a yearly opportunity for international experts and other academics in the field of intellectual property (IP) to come together and exchange current research. The set-up of ATRIP’s conference enables for ease of networking with similar speakers separated into common sessions. Tana Pistorius, ATRIP President, and her team of organizers, did a superb job in ensuring a diversity of, yet connection between, sessions. Sessions covered a range of topics from new ideas for leveraging traditional knowledge (or “innovation knowledge” as Susy Frankel stated), to plant breeder’s rights, to diversity, art and culture in IP and innovation.

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,...