Sisule F. Musungu - On Monday, 16th November 2009 IQsensato made a statement to the Fourth Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP). This statement was read by Poku Adusei of the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) Project which is a collaborating partner of IQsensato.

Statement of IQsensato to the Fourth Session of CDIP

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

I speak on behalf of IQsensato, which welcomes the opportunity to speak at this session of the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP).

IQsensato’s purpose is to provide an international platform for promoting the research and thinking of researchers and experts to inform and shape international policy debates and discussions such as the ones taking place in this Committee. In this context, IQsensato has been collaborating with the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) Project (http://www.aca2k.org/index.php/); a project that has explored for over two years, through empirical research, the relationship between national intellectual property (IP) frameworks, particularly the copyright environments, and access to knowledge in African countries.

At the Third Session of the CDIP, we described the project and shared some of our preliminary findings. We are providing outside this meeting room a number of Briefing Papers about these preliminary findings as well as our methodology guide and other materials. We will also be presenting more detailed country specific findings from the ACA2K work to the forthcoming session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR).

As we noted at the Third Session of this Committee, the connection between IP law and knowledge production/consumption is often ignored in Africa. While there are several aspects of national copyright law that are crucial to access to knowledge, the role of limitations and exceptions is particularly noteworthy towards this end. In this respect, ACA2K research indicates that copyright limitations and exceptions are too narrowly and/or vaguely defined in a number of African countries to facilitate access in a balanced and effective manner.

In this context, we hope that the implementation of projects such as that on the public domain and that on information and communications technologies (ICTs), the digital divide and access to knowledge will result in concrete measures to address the practical impediments to access to educational materials, among others. Equally, we hope that the mechanisms put in place for coordination and evaluation of the implementation of the Development Agenda will provide national stakeholders and the international community with credible evidence on the basis of which better IP policy can be made in the future.

IQsensato, ACA2K and our network of researchers look forward to engaging with the national and regional implementation processes and to continue to bring research-based feedback to this Committee as a contribution to ensuring that the WIPO Development Agenda produces concrete development outcomes to the benefit of people in developing countries.

To this end, in addition to the work that has already been undertaken on copyright and access to knowledge, a number of ACA2K researchers have began, taking into account the WIPO Development Agenda and other processes, to explore new research directions. In particular, I would like to flag work towards exploring the potential of open innovation in both the formal and informal sectors in Africa. This work has relevance to, and will benefit from, a number of the WIPO Development Agenda projects, including the project on IP and technology transfer.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.