Research

By Vipal Jain Digital agricultural research is transforming the way crops are developed. New tools can speed up the ability to produce crops with higher...

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...

This 2010 edited volume, Access to Knowledge in Africa: The Role of Copyright, has chapters outlining the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) network’s research findings on the copyright environments of eight African countries.

So what is the Otigba Computer Village? Oyelaran-Oyeyinka in 2006 described it as the biggest ICT hub of West Africa – perhaps the biggest ICT market in all of Africa – because of the size and the volume of business activities carried out on a daily basis within the cluster. The research I have been conducting looks at the knowledge dynamics at play in the informal ICT businesses in the cluster, with a view to understanding how these dynamics drive informal enterprises’ innovation and scaling-up. While other studies of the cluster have evaluated the size and capacity of the cluster, the evolution of the cluster, mode of operation, performance, sustainability and constraints, there are no studies looking at how the local businesses identify new and useful knowledge. With over 5000 businesses in the cluster, there is bound to be knowledge exchange either through spillover or conscious transfer. How is this happening?

By Charlotte Galvani and Jeremy de Beer Negotiations toward a new international treaty on pandemic preparedness and response have failed to reflect a rights-based consensus...

By Chris Armstrong The African European Maker Innovation Ecosystem (mAkE) Project, of which Open AIR is part, has launched its Open Catalogue of Business Models (OCBM)....

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,...

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...

Authored by: Tobias Schonwetter and Bram Van Weile Abstract: Recognising the potential of 3D printing technology for facilitating locally relevant innovation and social entrepreneurship in...

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.