| Description: |
In 2012, through the support of WIPO, Botswana completed a very comprehensive National Intellectual Property (IP) Strategy which was based on a nation-wide mapping of the institutional and legal environment of the national IP system and awareness and use of the IP system by national institutions and sectors in the Botswana economy.
To respond to the identified challenges and harness Botswana’s potential to use the IP system to contribute to national development, the IP strategy identified five primary pillars within which concrete actions are defined in the form of projects, which are logically clustered into programs for implementation. The five pillars are:
• Pillar 1: Bridge gaps in the governance framework (to address the absence of linkages between key Government and Private Sectors for the optimization of the IP system);
• Pillar 2: Enhance capacities for financing IP generation and commercialization;
• Pillar 3: Develop capacities to raise awareness, offer education and training and conduct research in relation to IP;
• Pillar 4: Develop entrepreneurship capacities in selected areas; and
• Pillar 5: Enhance institutional capacities.
In January 2014, WIPO received a request from the Botswana Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property (ROCIP) to provide support to Government-funded research Organizations (letter and project proposal attached) to develop national capacities for technology transfer and create institutional IP management offices in order to tap into the wealth and value of research results that these institutions generate but which are not benefitting fully from the IP system for lack of a proper regulatory and institutional support and low awareness.
The request identified certain areas that need to be addressed in order for research, science and technology to make a significant contribution to Botswana’s 2011-2016 Economic Diversification Drive (EDD) whose aim is to create sustainable economic growth |