Category Archives: Access to Knowledge

“Making” Knowledge for Innovation and Development: Researching Kenyan Makerspaces

23 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Access to Knowledge, CIPIT Insights, CIPIT news, Information Technology, Intellectual Property, openAIR, Science Technology & Innovation, Uncategorized

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Kenya’s vibrant technology sector is known for its innovations in software. The successes of M-PESA, a widely used mobile money transfer platform, and Ushahidi, a global crowdsourcing mapping app, has drawn international attention to the Kenyan startup scene. Supporting the startup scene are a number of tech hubs, incubators, and accelerators.

Software, however, can only be as innovative as the hardware it runs on. A growing network of makerspaces are training Kenyan innovators in the knowledge and skills to manufacture disruptive hardware solutions. What is the story of makerspaces in Kenya? What supports are available for hardware-based innovators? How effective are these makerspaces at promoting innovation? What methods are innovators using to share and protect their ideas?

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Thoughts on an Innovation Exchange Portal for Kenya

01 Monday May 2017

Posted by in Access to Knowledge, CIPIT Insights, Information Technology, Intellectual Property

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Over the years, this blogger has been interested in finding ways to facilitate the free flow of relevant and useful information among the various players in the innovation ecosystem in Kenya. For instance, through blogging, trained lawyers such as this blogger have been able to demystify the areas of law at the heart of most knowledge-based businesses including contract law, company law, information technology law, labour law, tax law and of course, intellectual property (IP) law. However, the downside of blogging is that it’s one-way traffic yet most bloggers (present company included) are more interested in eliciting views and insights from readers than merely imparting information through blogging.

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World Intellectual Property Day 2017 Theme: “Innovation – Improving Lives”

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Access to Essential Medicines, Access to Knowledge, CIPIT Insights, Information Technology, Intellectual Property, openAIR, Technology & Innovation

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World IP Day 2017 Poster WIPO

As readers of this blog may already know, on April 26th every year, the World Intellectual Property Day is celebrated with the purpose of “learning the role that intellectual property rights (patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright) play in encouraging innovation and creativity.” According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), this year’s focus is on exploring “how innovation is making our lives healthier, safer, and more comfortable, turning problems into progress.” In addition, the organisation highlighted the importance of looking at “how the intellectual property system supports innovation by attracting investment, rewarding creators, encouraging them to develop their ideas, and ensuring that their new knowledge is freely available so that tomorrow’s innovators can build on today’s new technology.”

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A New Look at High Tech Hubs in the ‘Digital Savannah’: Part 1

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Access to Knowledge, CIPIT Insights, CIPIT news, Information Technology, Intellectual Property, openAIR

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iHub

Toward the end of 2016, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited tech hubs in Kenya and Nigeria. During this, he remarked: “The future will be built in Africa”. Indeed the emergence of Africa’s technology hubs is of crucial importance for those living on the continent, as the trend represents an opportunity for homegrown entrepreneurship, devising local solutions to socio-economic problems and being a major catalyst for the continent’s innovation revolution.

This is the first in a series of blog posts highlighting Open AIR’s latest working paper, A Framework for Assessing Technology Hubs in Africa, which will soon be published in the New York University Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law. This is the first paper to offer a framework for systematically describing and assessing the emergence of high technology hubs throughout Africa. It is also the first paper to explain the legal and policy implications of Africa’s innovation revolution for those both within and outside the continent. It is hoped that this paper will be the foundation for new research into African high technology hubs and innovation.

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Book Review: “Digital Kenya: An Entrepreneurial Revolution in the Making” edited by Bitange Ndemo & Tim Weiss

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Access to Knowledge, Information Technology, M-Pesa, openAIR, Social Media and the Law, Technology & Innovation, Technovation

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The editors of Digital Kenya: An Entrepreneurial Revolution in the Making describe it as a ‘book of arguments and ideas’ and this blogger agrees with this analysis. Published in 2017 and originally published in 2016, a copy of the e-book is freely available under open access. The focus of the book is Kenya’s entrepreneurial revolution in the tech sector. Digital Kenya is authored and edited in a very interesting way; 14 key figures in the Kenya’s tech startup scene were interviewed (including Jay Larson, co-founder of the Tunapanda Institute discussed in a post here) and they provide a unique insight into the inner workings of the Kenyan tech scene and what it takes to be a digital entrepreneur, in addition the book was written by professors, contributors and scholars and edited by Bitange Ndemo and Tim Weiss.

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Book Review: “Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness” by Nathaniel Tkacz

28 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Access to Knowledge, Copyright, Guest Post

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wikipedia-and-the-politics-of-openness-book-nathaniel-tkacz

The Internet, as a ubiquitous platform, was founded on the principles of openness, participation and collaborative development. ‘Openness’ in this context refers to the policies and procedures that allow Internet users to make free and autonomous choices on the online services and content that they use and create. Openness is cited as having been similarly fundamental to the development of world’s most popular reference tool, Wikipedia. For example, some observers point to Wikipedia’s slogan “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” as evidence of this openness.

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African States Urged to Ratify and Domesticate #MarrakeshTreaty

30 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in Access to Knowledge, Copyright

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marrakesh-treaty

On September 30, 2016 the Marrakesh Treaty — the international agreement to improve access to copyrighted works for the blind and visually impaired — enters into force. The treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled has been discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) since 2008 and was signed in Marrakesh, Morocco in June 2013. It was finally ratified by the required 20 states, and today, three months later, it goes into effect.

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