Open Access

This 2013 book is the product of three years of literature reviews, expert interviews and scenario-building exercises by the Open AIR network. The authors trace the contours of knowledge and innovation in Africa from the founding civilisations to today’s current realities, and then set out the drivers of change that can be expected to shape innovation systems on the continent between now and the year 2035.

This fall, two Open AIR New and Emerging Researchers Uchenna Ugwu and Sileshi Hirko successfully defended their PhD theses at the University of Ottawa. Food...

In the recently concluded ‘African Ministerial Conference: Intellectual Property for an Emerging Africa’ organized in part by WIPO (here), one cannot help but think that all roads leading to creativity and innovation are paved with intellectual property (IP) laws and institutions. Put differently, the level of creativity and innovation in a society is dependent solely on how we tinker with and enforce IP laws. This ‘IP parochialism’, as I call it, is manifest in the conference program. Of course, the response would be that the conference was solely about IP and as such there was no need to look beyond IP. This is an erroneous view.

Published by Open AIRPublication Date: 2014Download: Optimising Benefits from Publicly Funded Research (323) This 2014 Briefing Note highlights Open AIR research findings on apparent disconnects between...

Authored by: Jeremy de Beer Abstract: Governments have long been interested in making intellectual property (IP) policy based on sound evidence. There is a large...

By Chidi Oguamanam and Sarah O’Flaherty The State of Affairs As the vaccination rate rises in Canada and other developed nations, developing countries globally continue to record an...

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.

Edited by: Chidi Oguamanam. When the oral history of a medicinal plant as a genetic resource is used to develop a blockbuster drug, how is the contribution of Indigenous Peoples recognized in research and commercialization? What other ethical, legal, and policy issues come into play? Is it accurate for countries to self-identify as users or providers of genetic resources?

By Sileshi Hirko  Introduction The last week of May 2017 was a week of great academic activity in Canada, Congress 2017. This event is run by...

Authored by: Jeremy de Beer Abstract: This article integrates the concepts of open innovation and open development. It extends the theory of open development beyond...