Appel à soumissions : Perspectives africaines sur la régulation de l’innovation
Le Réseau Open AIR est heureux d’annoncer un appel à soumissions pour un atelier international et une publication sur le thème de la régulation...
Skills Development and Innovation at Suame Magazine, Ghana
Funded by the Open AIR network, my case study is about skills development and innovation at Ghana’s Suame Magazine Industrial Cluster. The research I am conducting seeks to understand the processes and systems that contribute to how knowledge is or is not shared and how skills are acquired in one of West Africa’s largest informal sector industrial clusters, Suame Magazine. How skills are learned and what is communicated between those in the industrial cluster will help us to learn how innovations are shared and taught among these informal businesses.
Maker spaces in developing countries: Sites of innovation despite simultaneous challenges
by Mohamed Hosny
In the past few years, there have been several initiatives to help entrepreneurs introduce new creative and innovative products that break from...
A Cross-Regional Research Partnership for Sustainable Development: The Open African Innovation...
This paper positions and critiques the Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network as a unique cross-regional PPP research platform. It examines, on empirical and theoretical perspectives, the elements of the Open AIR project, including its core driving factors relevant to the development gap associated with IP and knowledge governance in Africa.
Beyond the Poster Boy of the Maker Movement
Some people tour Europe’s finest vineyards others tour Australia’s sweetest surf spots—I tour South Africa’s pioneer makerspaces; part of the growing global maker movement. The movement is a culmination of people becoming “makers” (someone who uses their personal abilities to create anything from mechanical or electrical to visual or musical) and spaces becoming makerspaces (an interdisciplinary area stimulating people to create by providing resources and idea sharing).
À l’ère postpandémique, Open AIR cherche des solutions équitables aux freins à...
En 2013, le réseau Open AIR (Open African Innovation Research) publiait une étude prospective prévoyant un avenir ponctué de bouleversements, comme une pandémie catastrophique à l’échelle...
Science, Technology & Innovation and Intellectual Property
2020 was an eventful year for the whole world, as a public health and economic crisis raged, bringing to the fore the perennial challenge of how to craft and use Intellectual Property (IP) institutions, law, policies and practices, collectively ‘IP frameworks’ to add to efforts to achieve sustainable development, and to consider recovery paths for economies. This coincided with intensified efforts to boost intra-African trade and enhance regional integration through the Agreement on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)and the entry of the US into negotiations for a bilateral FTA with Kenya. This book engages with this challenge in its six chapters.
Opportunities for Women in Transformative Innovation and 4IR in Africa
By Pamela Mreji
Since the beginning of time, women and men inventors and entrepreneurs have transformed our world through the power of their imagination and...
IP, Gender, and South Africa: a Student’s Visit to Open AIR’s...
By Akkila Thirukesan
This blog is part one of a series into Akkila’s during her visit to Open AIR’s South Africa hub – the...
How Women’s Economic Empowerment Is Tackling Poverty in Southwest Nigeria
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...












