Events

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.

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.

The WIPO-IGC recently commenced the next installment of its deliberations for a text-based instrument that focuses on the protection of traditional cultural expressions (TCEs), pursuant to its mandate. There are two scheduled forums on TCEs beginning Feb 27-March 3 and to be completed in June 2017, which will round off the Committee’s work for the 2016-17 biennium.

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.

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...

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,...

By Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou Du 6 au 10 mai 2018, la ville de Dakar accueillait le Festival Afropixel 6 sur la thématique « Utopies non-alignées :...

Agricultural data is a vital resource in the effort to address food insecurity. This data is used across the food-production chain. For example, farmers rely on agricultural data to decide when to plant crops, scientists use data to conduct research on pests and design disease resistant plants, and governments make policy based on land use data. As the value of agricultural data is understood, there is a growing call for governments and firms to open their agricultural data.

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...

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...