Open AIR Presents at Fourth Global Congress on IP and the...

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...

Hani Morsi Presents in Cairo

Hani Morsi, an Open AIR Post-Doctoral fellow at the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) in Cairo, gave a seminar last week entitled “Beyond openness: Investigating the success factors of open approaches to collaboration and innovation”. This was part of the Brown Bag seminar series of AUC’s School of Business.

MSMEs and Open Collaborative Innovation in Botswana

Authored by: Njoku Ola Ama and Francis Nathan Okurut Abstract: This study explores the adoption, by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Botswana, of...

Is Creativity and Innovation All About Intellectual Property?

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.

A Data Commons for Food Security

Agricultural data is globally recognized for its importance in addressing food insecurity. We propose a ‘data commons’, formed through a licensing model that allows farmers to benefit from the datasets to which they contribute.

Harnessing Digital Agriculture to Advance African Food Security: Open AIR Research...

By Uchenna Felicia Ugwu Achieving global food security will require innovation. Processes like plant phenotyping and technologies like digital imaging are examples of innovation that...

Genetic Resources, Justice and Reconciliation: Canada and Global Access and Benefit...

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?

La transition vers des villes et des territoires durables le role...

Par Abdelhamid Benhmade En réponse à l’invitation de Cités et Gouvernements Locaux Unis d’Afrique (CGLU Afrique), j’ai eu la possibilité d’assister à la 8èmeédition du...

L’Afrique à l’épreuve de la Covid-19

Par Abdelhamid Benhmade En quatre semaines, la situation est devenue extrêmement alarmante sur le continent africain. « Les populations africaines vivent l’un des pires épisodes pandémiques...

Reconciling Copyright with Creativity: New Insights from 2018 Conferences (Part II)

By Helen Chuma-Okoro and Nicole Tumaine This is part two of Helen Chuma-Okoro and Nicole Tumaine’s blog post on the insights retained from 2018 conferences,...