Research

By Esther Adekunbi Mobolayo I started my QES in January 2020 but, within months, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. At first, it appeared as if...

By Philda Maiga A new dawn is upon Africa, following a decision on 5 December 2020 of the African Union Assembly to kickstart the trading...

By Ahou Rachel Koumi In 2019, my niece and I enjoyed a two-day outing to the famous beaches of Assinie, in Côte d'Ivoire. I have fond...

The “Makers” who come together to tinker and hack in the maker collectives of South Africa’s Gauteng Province display a wide range of innovation practices, our research for Open AIR has found. Our study, Collaboration and Appropriation in Gauteng Makerspaces, investigated the activities of eight Gauteng maker collectives. The findings have now been published in Open AIR Working Paper 6, entitled The Maker Movement in Gauteng Province, South Africa.

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.

Our Open AIR researcher Dr. Erika Kraemer-Mbula is continuing her exciting research in South Africa about informal sector entrepreneurs. Informal entrepreneurship is receiving increasing scholarly and political attention in Africa. The continent’s booming youth population calls for an unprecedented need to create income and livelihood opportunities. Besides the traditional focus on formalisation, there is a growing interest in understanding the creative processes and innovations occurring in informal enterprises. However, evidence remains scarce, and research on informal enterprises still represents a relatively new and unexplored frontier.

Authored by: Nagham ElHoussamy and Dr. Nagla Rizk Abstract: This Working Paper sets out findings from research exploring the growing maker movement across North Africa, focusing...

By Sarah El Saeed The Egyptian Government has begun in pushing through a fiscal and monetary reform plan that includes various unpopular austerity measures. In...

Par Abdelhamid Benhmade À quelques semaines près, l’Organisation mondiale du commerce tiendra sa douzième conférence ministérielle pour discuter de plusieurs dossiers tant complexes qu’épineux, entre...

By Charlene Musiza The marketing of traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) – which are manifestations of traditional culture such as handicrafts, sculptures and performances – presents...