Project Launch - Catalyzing AI innovation in Africa through IP
Wed Feb 25, 09:00 - Wed Feb 25, 11:00
SRC Chambers, Conference Centre, University of Pretoria
ABOUT
The University of Pretoria in collaboration with a group of researchers associated with the Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) Network, including researchers based at the University of Ottawa and York University, Canada was awarded a grant by International Development Research Centre (IDRC) for a project titled: Catalyzing AI’s potential in Africa through intellectual property innovation (the “Project”). This project is part of the Artificial Intelligence for Development program, a partnership between IDRC and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. It aims to support policy, innovations and expanded leadership to spur safe and responsible AI in Africa.
The Project seeks to place intellectual property (IP) law and policy nearer to the centre of inclusive and responsible AI governance across the African continent. While AI strategies emerging at continental and national levels increasingly acknowledge the importance of IP, there is a lack of focused analysis and coordinated action on how IP frameworks actually support or constrain AI innovation. This project addresses that gap through targeted research, engagement, and policy interventions designed to reframe IP as a core lever for enabling AI to serve Africa’s development priorities.
The implementation of the Project involves core academic research activities, organising and/or participation in knowledge dissemination events including workshops, conferences and seminars, monitoring and evaluation to ensure alignment with project goals and gender, equality, diversity and inclusivity metrics, etc.
We are launching the Project alongside a report on the “State of intellectual property governance of artificial intelligence in Africa”.
AI-IP AFRICA PROJECT LAUNCH
Launch Agenda
The launch will be conducted as a 120-minute event in a hybrid format, featuring:
- Opening remarks
- A concise presentation of the Project’s thematic focus areas and expected outcomes
- A concise presentation of the State of IP governance of AI in Africa Report’s key messages
- A moderated discussion with experts from African countries, institutions, AI innovation start-ups, and academia
- A roundtable of national and regional IP regulators across Africa
- An interactive Q&A session with participants
- Closing remarks
The launch will be followed by Regulation for Innovation project Showcase and Knowledge co-production
PROJECT SHOWCASE 1
Regulation for Innovation project Showcase
The launch will be followed by a showcase session for the Regulation for Innovation project led by UCT and uOttawa. The showcase session will highlight evidence and findings from the Open AIR “Regulation for Innovation” project demonstrating how regulation, properly designed, can be a powerful enabler of inclusive, sustainable innovation across Africa. By bringing together evidence from fields like health, digital infrastructure, clean energy and trade, the showcase would offer concrete examples of how adaptive regulatory frameworks help unlock innovation that supports public goods and social development. In short, the showcase would make visible the practical benefits of rethinking regulation not as a burden, but as a foundation for innovation that furthers the SDGs.
Study: The Future of African Intellectual Property Regulation and Administration
• Prof Chidi Oguamanam, Professor and Research Chair, University of Ottawa, Canada
• Prof Caroline Ncube, SARChI Chair IP, Innovation and Development, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Study: Fostering Information and Knowledge Access in the Digital Environment: A Situational Analysis of Legal-regulatory Frameworks in ARIPO Region
• A/Prof. Dick Kawooya, School of Information Science, University of South Carolina, USA.
• Prof. Desmond Oriakhogba, Department of Private Law, University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
• Dr. Anthony Kakooza, Commercial Law Department, Makerere University, Uganda.
• Prof Chijioke Okorie, Project Leader and PI, Data Science Law Lab, University of Pretoria.
PROJECT SHOWCASE 2
Project Showcase [Globally inclusive biomedical innovation]
Presentations of studies on Open opportunities for globally inclusive biomedical innovation
- Prof. Caroline Ncube, SARChI Chair IP, Innovation and Development, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
- Dr. Melissa Omino, CIPIT, Strathmore University, Kenya.
- Prof Chidi Oguamanam, Professor and Research Chair, University of Ottawa, Canada
OPEN LICENSING AND AFRICAN AI CONTEXT
Open licensing beyond Creative Commons Licenses in the African AI Context
In the age of AI, content of nearly any type can and often is treated as data. In some ways, this is not new. Computational techniques have been employed for decades to analyze content to find patterns, trends, and correlations. But AI technologies, particularly the advent of generative AI, have changed both the scale and the stakes of this type of reuse. Data is divorced from its context and community.
Major philanthropic foundations with open access policies often mandate the use of CC0 and/or CC BY for grantee outputs. In the African context, foundations are supporting the creation of language datasets for AI training. While this is done under the auspices of increasing representation of smaller languages and building more locally-relevant solutions, the problem becomes the licensing of the dataset. If the license applied is CC BY, this puts the dataset at risk of extractive uses.
This talk presents the issues identified and discussed at a previous small gathering and frames the issues around open licensing in the African AI context.