This year marks the 30th anniversary since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, or the ‘Earth Summit’) took place in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. This landmark event brought together heads of state and civil society stakeholders to address urgent problems of environmental protection and socio-economic development, and marked the beginning of drafting important agreements such as the one addressing climate change.

In response to a request from the Kenyan Anti-Counterfeit Authority (ACA) and in accordance with DG Trade, AfrIPI will provide the Government of Kenya with specialised training on the ‘systematic collection and entry into an electronic database, of information from IPR owners regarding their registered IPRs irrespective of their place of registration, for all goods to be imported into Kenya’.

The training event will be held from 4 to 5 October 2022 in Nairobi, Kenya. It will be followed by a study visit to Mauritius in December 2022.

From 1-3 September AL-INVEST Verde IPR held the event entitled ‘Intellectual Property and Bioeconomy’ during the tenth edition of the Green Rio conference in cooperation with the Brazilian National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI). This included a 3-day information stand and a seminar called ‘Intellectual Property Strategies for the Benefit of Green Technologies and Sustainable Development’.

On 6 and 7 September 2022, the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) together with the Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation Project in Africa (AfrIPI) organised training for staff members of the Lesotho Copyright Society of Authors and Artists (LESCOSAA). It took place at the Avani Lesotho Hotel and Casino in Maseru, Kingdom of Lesotho.

There was a need for government communicators and journalists to be equipped to effectively inform their audiences of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) Regional Intellectual Property Rights System, which could be used to raise awareness at a national, regional, and global level.  This is because they might not know how to identify and synthesise intellectual property (IP) information so that it can be consumed by the stakeholders (e.g., the general public, innovators, investors, IP agents/attorneys, and IP bodies).