History & Context

First Stop, the American University in Cairo By the AUC New and Emerging Research Group and Meika Ellis Under the masterful guidance of our North African...

Authored by: Caroline Ncube. This chapter provides an historical account of the development of IP on the African continent which highlights how the introduction of IP systems and their transposed legislation displaced existing knowledge governance systems and entrenched a primarily extractor-biased IP system.

Open AIR is calling for African case studies that shed light on the following two overarching research questions: How can open collaborative innovation help businesses scale up and seize the new opportunities of a global knowledge economy? Which knowledge governance systems will best ensure that the social and economic benefits of innovation are shared inclusively across society as a whole?

This paper positions and critiques the Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network as a unique cross-regional PPP research platform. It examines, on empirical and theoretical perspectives, the elements of the Open AIR project, including its core driving factors relevant to the development gap associated with IP and knowledge governance in Africa.

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...

This 2010 edited volume, Access to Knowledge in Africa: The Role of Copyright, has chapters outlining the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) network’s research findings on the copyright environments of eight African countries.

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...

This paper maps the 130-year history of the IP treaty landscape governing the protection of, and access to, knowledge in Africa.