Open AIR North Africa Distinguished Speaker Series: Ibrahim Al-Safadi on Makerspaces...
On 10 December 2016, as part of the RiseUp Summit in Cairo, Open AIR’s North Africa hub hosted their first Distinguished Speaker event with Ibrahim Al-Safadi, the CEO of Luminous Education. The Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) invited Al-Safadi to speak about the role of “makerspaces” to tackle unemployment and to share his experiences in how to create a makerspace that ensures that the individuals involved end up with jobs.
Open AIR East Africa Distinguished Speaker Series: Dr. Henry Mutai on...
On 10 June 2015, the Agreement establishing a Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) was signed in Egypt bringing together 26 African countries from three major regional blocs: the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Following the signing, the current phase of the TFTA negotiations are meant to cover five agenda items: trade in services, cooperation in trade and development, competition policy, intellectual property (IP) rights, and cross-border investment. The fourth of those five issues was the subject of the second Open AIR East Africa Distinguished Speaker Series presentation by Dr. Henry Kibet Mutai.
Les Fablabs en Afrique : une utopie à l’épreuve des...
By Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou
Du 6 au 10 mai 2018, la ville de Dakar accueillait le Festival Afropixel 6 sur la thématique « Utopies non-alignées :...
Traditional cultural expressions preservation and innovation: The Tonga Baskets of Zambia
By Charlene Musiza
The marketing of traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) – which are manifestations of traditional culture such as handicrafts, sculptures and performances – presents...
Expedited COVID-19 R&D: Indigenous Knowledge and ABS Imperative
With the world on edge as the COVID-19 crisis progresses, the scientific community has sprung into gear in search of an effective treatment. Research and Development (R&D) is progressing at unprecedented speeds. Amidst this rapid development, traditional knowledge plays a significant role in scientific endeavours. Through traditional knowledge, medical researchers can gain guidance and inspiration and bypass prolonged and expensive scatter-gun approaches to R&D.
Lords of the Platforms: Beyond Banning Twitter, What else Should Nigeria...
By Adedamola Adediji
It’s a flattened world! An offshoot of this is that political discourse, commercial transactions, and economic activities have mainly moved online. This...
Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence – Southern Africa
Open AIR has two co-hubs in Southern Africa: the Intellectual Property Unit (IP) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), and the University of...
Open AIR Research into 4th Industrial Revolution Technologies and Artificial Intelligence:...
By Nagham El Houssamy and Nadine Weheba
This is part three in a three part series. For part one, click here. For part two, click here.
Monumental advances in technology are...
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.
Focusing on Indigenous Data Sovereignty as Part of ‘Shifting Horizons’
By Toni Valenti
On Thursday, March 28th,
Open AIR attended the Indigenous Data Sovereignty panel at the Shifting Horizons research data
conference at the University of Ottawa....












