The Continental Strategy for geographical indications (GIs) in Africa (2018-2023) highlights the importance of the development and registration of GI products as pilots and drivers for rural and sustainable development to provide learning and demonstrative effects.
On 21 and 22 February 2023, AfrIPI took part in the first EU-Kenya Business Forum in Nairobi, Kenya.
The Nigeria Intellectual Property (IP) Office still has a vast quantity of paper-based trade marks, which must be scanned to migrate the data to the back-office system (IPAS). This IP Office has been selected as the pilot office to give support to in this digitalisation process. The first steps were taken during AWP1 and AWP2, which will now be continued in AWP3.
The objective of the activity is to scan and capture the first sets of data for active trade marks in the Nigeria IP Office, which are currently paper-based.
The Africa IP SME Helpdesk assists EU businesses by organising training events, publishing IP resources, and replying to queries on IP issues in Africa through its helpline service.
This activity is a continuation of the Communications Training on the ARIPO Regional Intellectual Property Rights System in AWP2. The activity aims to provide the participants, namely government communicators and journalists, with tools and support to help them increase the awareness of intellectual property rights among various stakeholders in the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) Member and Observer States.
This activity aims to provide ARIPO Member States with technical assistance on a pilot (meeting AfrIPI’s criteria for support) to register their associated name as a Geographical Indication (GI) in their national system.
Additionally, the activity will be an opportunity to suggest studies that could assess the potential for any given product to function as a sustainable GI. It will also be an opportunity to provide the Member States with assistance in bring together a GI managing group and/or GI specifications and control plans, as the case may be.
This activity aims to support individual countries, such as Nigeria, that have expressed the need to adopt a standalone system for protecting geographical indications (GIs). It will allow those countries to align with efforts to promote high-level protection for GIs at a continental level, as is the case for the OAPI system.
The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), are delivering a comprehensive Intellectual Property (IP) Master’s Programme in English to three universities in Africa: Africa University (AU) in Zimbabwe, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana and the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in Tanzania.
This activity aims to increase intellectual property awareness among researchers, staff, and students from academic and research institutions in ARIPO Member States. It will promote the creation, protection and use of IP tools to achieve economic and technological development.
This activity aims to promote accession by the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) member states to international agreements on intellectual property rights. Accessions can increase these states’ market value for trade and investment purposes.
At the same time, the activity will promote accession to ARIPO’s Intellectual Property (IP) protocols by ARIPO member states that have not yet joined some or all of ARIPO’s protocols.