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The Young African Innovators, Creators and Entrepreneurs Workshop: Intellectual Property (IP), Innovation, and Creativity for Entrepreneurship and Job Creation, took place in Dakar, Senegal, on November 2, 2015, prior to the African Ministerial Conference 2015: IP for an emerging Africa. The Workshop brought together young African innovators, creators, inventors, and entrepreneurs. The main objective was to give the youth a platform to be educated about the IP system and how it can be used to protect, develop and commercialize their innovations. The Workshop was a resounding success going by the feedback we received from the participants as well as the resource persons. See attached report. One of the positive outcomes of the Workshop was the mapping of mentors who are experts in the specific areas of interest to the participants, to hand-hold and follow-up the different projects.
The African Innovation Foundation (AIF) actively participated and shared their experiences in promoting innovation particularly for the Youth in the Africa at the Workshop. AIF is now organizing the Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) in Gaborone, Botswana, from
June 22 to 23, 2016. This is the fifth year of the IPA event and they propose to move from focusing on the award prizes only, to have two days of innovative and participatory workshops focusing on key issues relevant for African innovators and innovation enablers. As a result, they have approached WIPO to partner with them in organizing an IP Workshop within the margins of the IPA.
To build on the success of the Dakar Workshop, the Regional Bureau for Africa had envisaged the organization of a sub-regional Workshop in its 2016 Work plan. Given the above, we think this would be an opportune moment to partner with AIF in the organization of this Workshop.
It is also important to note that the Director General had a very productive meeting with the Chairman of AIF last year where the two agreed to sign a memo |