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ALBERT Einstein once stated:
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Intellectual
Property Rights are often considered as serious obstacles to trade
and the transfer of technologies related to the conservation of
biological diversity. African countries are rich in biodiversity
and indigenous knowledge which has flowed freely to the developed
countries. However global market trends are such that Africa must
urgently address issues pertaining to property rights if they
have to fit into the global economy and also stimulate inventions
and innovations. The challenge facing Africa is how to produce
high quality goods and services while at the same time tackling
poverty and unemployment. Africa is seen to participate in IPR
as late comers already faced with other priority issues and lacking
capacity to enforce IPR regimes.
In the book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney argues
that the Western world engaged in atrocities and looting of the
African continent making people desperately poor. Fifty years
after most African countries gained independence from Europe,
the Africans are still queuing for donor funding, investing less
in homegrown solutions and African talent. The biggest question
is why this is happening in Africa, where people are endowed with
a creative and innovative human mind.
The West did not get wealthy by merely exploiting the Third World.
Dennis T. Avery in his paper Sustaining Both Planet and People
argues that the West invented the systematic search for knowledge
and then shared it broadly. It has always sought systematic knowledge
that can be replicated and refer to that knowledge as “science”.
It is for this reason that they have moved from focusing on natural
resources such as “land” to resources such as transistors,
radios, fiber optic cables from sand. Most Third World countries
on the other hand have focused only on the “visible wealth”
and ‘tribal organization’. Instead of fostering wealth,
this structure promotes war over resources.
The list of inventions and innovations rarely indicates participation
from Africa, falsely creating an impression that Africans are
not creative and innovative. On the contrary however, long before
the colonialist came to Africa, the African people had started
ventures in medicine, iron smelting, arts, music, house building,
and bead making and curving. The power of innovation was also
exhibited in the way they preserved fire for later use, stored
foodstuffs and the very fact that they could light a fire by rubbing
two sticks together.
However, the lack of systematic recording and beyond a collective
level of property right recognition, robbed many innovators in
Africa the ability to have their ideas improved upon and made
economically viable. More so, the lack of a property rights regime
that could measure to the countries that later colonized Africa
made it easier for both physical and intellectual property to
be seized by the occupying powers. Keeping knowledge secret as
did metallurgists and medicine men in Africa without proper records
robbed this continent of knowledge that would presently solve
some of the ailments afflicting the continent.
Intellectual Property Rights is the phrase that describes ideas,
inventions, technologies, artworks, music and literature that
are intangible when first created, but become valuable in tangible
forms as products. IPR is the commercial application of imaginative
thought to solving a technical or artistic challenge. It is not
a product itself, but the special idea behind it, the way the
idea is expressed, and the distinctive way it is named and described.
Africa is plagued by many problems ranging from social to economic
that urgently indicate the presence of a unique market opportunity
to innovators. Innovations may not necessarily be triggered by
Intellectual Property Rights regime but also by the demand for
solutions. It is therefore strategic for Africans to develop a
quest within themselves to solve their own problems as a step
to reaping benefits from IPR.
Some of the areas IPR can be used include the health sector, agricultural
sector and the arts. For instance, Malaria was identified as the
primary cause of poverty that slows down economic growth in Africa
by 1.3. It is estimated that Kenya spends $10.4 million every
year to control malaria.
Intellectual Property ownership becomes a strategic tool for Africans
to tackle diseases of poverty given the fact that wealthy nations
may spend less time on diseases that don’t affect them.
To stem the tide of HIV/Aids and Malaria in Africa, proper incentives
for innovators must be put in place in order to save more Africans
from dying. IPR protection does not stop philanthropists and other
people who might want to assist the poor from doing so. It simply
means to provide an avenue that will promote creativity and rewards
to innovators.
Intellectuals from Africa migrate to wealthy countries in search
of more rewarding challenges, better pay and recognition. This
has been possible due to lack of an effective intellectual property
regime that will make them stay home and help their countries
create wealth. More often than not, they are harassed and treated
with suspicion for merely being intellectuals.
To stem brain drain, it is instructive that Africa builds institutions
that will protect intellectual property. This will ensure that
the African innovators build upon the already existing knowledge
to solve the continent’s problems. Africa has become a mining
ground for intellectual property with many researchers focusing
on the biosphere and culture, without promoting systems that protect
property, and chances of abuse can be high.
In the field of agriculture, intellectual property regime will
spur activity among the scientists and farmers to facilitate new
knowledge that will lead to innovations. Such innovations will
save Africa from relying on “climate fed” agriculture
to intelligently driven agricultural practices. Releasing agro-based
population will enhance other areas of the economy such as the
tourism industry, the retail industry and other technologically
oriented industries. This can also make Africa to effectively
join the biotech industry and save her populations from malnutrition
and hunger.
Developed countries have been known to use protection of property
rights as a barrier to trade especially in the field of medicine
and arts. Third World countries ought to enforce intellectual
property protection for its own good while at the same time allowing
more innovators to compete in their own countries in order facilitate
affordable prices.
What belongs to everyone, belongs to no one, and hence falls into
disrepair. Africa must urgently seize this opportunity of protecting
intellectual property not only in order to protect her own and
make her people more innovative and provide solutions to African
problems, but also to attract more investment and exchange of
goods from other countries.
Intellectual Property Rights is a useful tool in maintaining the
innovation process much needed to make Africa industrious. It’s
only through this that Africa will move from focusing only on
the “visible wealth” to the invisible. This will not
only improve the economies, give more avenues for investment but
also reduce conflicts in the continent.
James Shikwati is the Director of the Inter Region
Economic Network and Africa Resource Bank Coordinator.
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