The Role of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in promoting Africa’s Development
This paper aims to provide an overview of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in Africa, and it is the first of a series of three policy papers under the overall title of “the role of IPRs in promoting Africa’s development.” The paper outlines the basic concept of IPRs in selected areas such as health, agriculture and industrialization in which IP could potentially play an important role in promoting sustainable development. It examines the importance of IPRs, which could be leveraged as a tool to facilitate Africa’s development through providing incentives to inventors and creators as well as facilitating disclosure of knowledge and the transfer of technology and know-how. IPRs are one of key elements of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), which is an important cross-cutting enabler for the implementation of United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and African Union (AU)’s Agenda 2063.