History & Context

Introduction In 2020, Ethiopia, a country that has faced a refugee crisis primarily because of long-term conflicts, experienced a deadly war that displaced many Ethiopians...

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

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 Nan Warner A number of senior members of the Open AIR Network participated in the Nigerian National Workshop on Research Grant Writing and Administration,...

C’est dans un contexte réglementaire favorable à l’innovation qu’on peut trouver les solutions aux problèmes sociaux les plus pressants. Mentionnons à titre d’exemples la...

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.

Ce livre, publié en 2011, permet de mieux saisir les enjeux juridiques et pratiques que posent les droits d’auteur pour l’accès au matériel didactique en Afrique et cerne les leçons apprises, les politiques et les pratiques susceptibles d’améliorer cet accès.

Open AIR ouvre la voie à une réglementation sur l’innovation plus équitable Le Centre de recherche pour le développement international (CRDI) a octroyé à Open AIR près...

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.