On 11 April 2022, the CarIPI project met with stakeholders in Haiti to:

The African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) ad hoc working group on geographical indications (GIs) was held online on 22 March 2022 in Harare, Zimbabwe.

This meeting was the first in its series. It aimed to reset the scene and create a subgroup of the ad hoc working group on GIs specifically tasked with achieving the expected results and presenting them at the next Administrative Council.

On 17 March 2022, the European Commission registered Cameroon’s ‘Poivre de Penja’ as the first protected geographical indication (PGI) from the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) region, and the second from Africa.

As part of the CarIPI Mentorship Programme, from 14 to 19 March 2022, the project organised the first face-to-face meetings between the mentors and producer groups from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

Under the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) Patent Examination Training programme (ARPET), AfrIPI, ARIPO and the European Patent Office (EPO) partnered together to train patent examiners of the national patent offices of ARIPO Member States.

The residential training programme was held in Zanzibar, Tanzania, from 11-15 July 2022 with approximately 40 participants.

The objective of the training programme was to develop the knowledge and skills of patent examiners of ARIPO Member States.

The APERT programme included the following topics: