IP academies are important for raising awareness on IP and strengthening capacities related to IP knowledge. Many of the African intellectual property offices and IP academies and institutes are either starting to create e-learning material and webinars, or continuously looking to update their existing offer.

Expanding the knowledge on IP in Africa is essential to create a strengthened IP network. It contributes to the development of human resources in the field of IP in Africa, creating a critical mass of professionals with the necessary skills to enable them to play a leading role in promoting the teaching, use and protection of intellectual property.

ARIPO is making vast efforts to set-up a regional case-law database on intellectual property rights (IPRs). To achieve this high-reaching objective, the establishment of a network or platform to link IPR judges would be needed. This would facilitate not only the creation of this database, but also its maintenance and continuous upload of new case-law for different IPRs.

Today, technological innovation represents the economic segment that has grown the most and has greatly contributed to the economic development of countries. In Angola, the current law on industrial property, approved on 1992, is outdated in relation to the advances, which have occurred at the level of the international industrial property system.

OAPI accessed the Geneva Act of The Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs and this became effective on 16 September 2008. Users obtain protection in all OAPI countries as well as the other members of the Geneva Act of The Hague Agreement by filing one single application for the registration of their industrial designs.

The twinning project ‘Trademarks and Industrial Designs Office’ was initiated on January 2020 and is scheduled to be implemented over a period of 18 months. The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the protection of trade marks and industrial designs in Egypt. The main expected results are to enhance the capacity of the Egyptian Trademarks and Industrial Designs Office (TIDO); upgrade TIDO’s automated systems and procedures; and raise public awareness on the importance of trade marks and industrial designs.

In the globalised world, where more and more businesses operate across national borders, regional harmonisation of IP soft law is key to facilitate the use of IP rights by MSMEs. It is important that policies and guidelines on examination are harmonised as much as possible on a regional level in order to ensure legal certainty, as well as lower the cost and time of trade mark and design registration procedures.

African countries are a key destination for counterfeit goods such as pharmaceuticals, with the hazards and damage that this pose to consumers. AfrIPI will organize a workshop to raise awareness among the African IPR enforcement authorities and other IPR enforcement officials on IPR infringement in the pharmaceutical industry. The activity will provide a platform to exchange best practices, as well as discuss the trends and continuing challenges faced by enforcement authorities across African countries.

A trend for increasing proliferation of counterfeit and illegal goods (ranging from medicine and food to pesticides) has been observed on the markets in North African countries. In this regard, AfrIPI will bring together key North African IPR policymakers, enforcement authorities and stakeholders to discuss about the effective techniques and strategies for detecting, monitoring and investigating IPR infringements. This roundtable will be an opportunity for these key stakeholders to share views on the existing gaps, best practices and the way forward.

The international development community has set a clear goal of reaching universal health coverage by 2030 while leaving no one behind. This also includes access to pharmaceutical products. There are two main licencing mechanisms in this regard: voluntary and compulsory. In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the issue of accessibility of vaccines necessitates awareness building on the available licencing mechanisms.