Do an online search for intellectual property in Africa, and not a whole lot comes up — not much that’s recent and new, anyway. Yes, you’ll find studies and reports from 2005 and 2008, but the bottom line is, there’s less information than there are questions and interest in the topic.
The World Economic Forum’s Africa Competitiveness Report 2015 ranked 34 African countries for competitiveness in business. This included ranking countries in Africa for intellectual property protection.
One of the questions it asked respondents in a survey was: “In your country, how strong is the protection of intellectual property, including anti-counterfeiting measures?”
Respondents were asked to rank their countries on a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 = extremely weak and 7 = extremely strong.
Intellectual property rights protect innovations and reward innovative activity, according to the International Environmental Law Research Center. The term is an umbrella for a bundle of rights focusing on the physical manifestations of intellectual activity in any field of human endeavor — which is why young African technology innovators are so interested in it.
These rights cover patents, trademarks and service marks, copyright, rights in performances, designs, plant breeders’ rights, utility models, appellations of origins, layout designs and topography.
In many African countries, intellectual property protection is undeveloped, ineffective and unenforced. Many innovators are put off by the expense and time it takes to register their products, Reuters reports.
Despite the technological innovation and disruption breaking out all over Africa, inventors often work in secret, sacrificing peer feedback for fear their ideas will be stolen.
Much of the past discussion on intellectual property rights in Africa centered around access to proprietary technology needed for development and around essential medicines for diseases such as HIV-AIDS.
But not all countries in Africa are equal when it comes to intellectual property protection. In fact the gaps between the three top-ranked African countries listed below is significant.
World Economic Forum’s detailed look at the performance of individual African economies and country groups reveals wide divergences in general economic performance across the continent.
Mauritius and South Africa continue to perform as well or better than other emerging market economies such as Brazil and India. A second cluster of countries, including Rwanda, Morocco, Botswana, and Algeria, performs better than the Latin American average, while a third and wider set of countries, including Tunisia, Namibia, Kenya, Seychelles, Zambia, Gabon, Lesotho, Ghana, Senegal, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Ethiopia outperform the sub-Saharan African average, World Economic Forum reports. The first four — Tunisia, Namibia, Kenya, Seychelles — even outperform the North African average. Not all of the above, however, are in the top 15 for intellectual property protection.
The Global Competitiveness Index showed that the majority of African countries are among the least competitive in the world. Despite 15 years of strong growth, Africa’s overall competitiveness has remained stagnant.
In a 2013 book, “African Contributions in Shaping the Worldwide Intellectual Property System,” Tshimanga Kongolo examines Africa’s contributions to global intellectual property instead of global IP’s influence on Africa. The book examines how Africans are actively protecting traditional knowledge, tackling public health, and accessing educational and genetic resources. For those who consider African countries passive takers of international norms shaped in the developed world, Kongolo’s informative account will make you rethink your assumptions, according to an Ashgate review.
Costs can be an obstacle for African innovators who may be struggling to raise funds, Reuters reports. Trademark applications in the higher ranges run between $1,200 to $1,700 while patents require $1,400 to $1,900, according to Johannesburg-based law firm ENS, which represents clients across the continent.
To encourage startups to protect and register their intellectual property, Microsoft’s 4Afrika initiative started a free service to help developers with the process and put lawyers at their disposal if they need to protect their patents, Reuters reports.
The World Economic Forum’s Africa Competitiveness Report 2015 ranked 34 African countries for competitiveness in business along with their global rankings. Below we’ve listed the 15 most competitive countries in Africa for intellectual property rights showing how they compare to 144 countries around the world.
Sources: WorldEconomicForum, International Environmental Law Research Center, Reuters, Ashgate.