Law, Technology and Humans
(October 2024)
Professor Chidi Oguamanam’s reflections in advance of WIPO’s IGC 47.
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Journal of African Law
Vol. 67, Issue 1 (February 2023)
Smart Agricultural Technology
Vol. 3 (February 2023)
African Journal of Legal Studies
Vol. 15, Issue 1 (January 2023)
Innovation is a vital practice in the knowledge economy. Also vital is finding ways to scale innovations so that they can have significant impact. The Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network has collected data in numerous African innovation settings over the past decade, and has, in the process, developed a four-pillar taxonomy of scaling practices. As outlined in its 2020 Scaling Innovation report, which draws on findings from 10 African countries, Open AIR has found that scaling by the continent’s knowledge-based enterprises can best be understood in terms of four overlapping dimensions: expanding coverage; broadening activities; changing behaviour; and building sustainability.
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“Dealing with health and economic challenges of Covid-19 has made one point abundantly clear for African countries – that we need broadband, faster, cheaper and expanded to the last mile of the populations”. This observation credited to UN Under Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, Ms. Vera Songwe has never rung truer than in these unprecedented times. Leveraging technology to assist African countries in the fight against Covid-19 is imperative to finding effective solutions for containing the virus in an economically feasible manner for Africa, taking into consideration the continent’s technological infrastructure.
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Africa’s fate is precarious in the face of COVID-19. It is the last continent to be affected by COVID-19 following the arrival of the contagion in Egypt and Nigeria in February 2020. Ideally, the late arrival of COVID-19 in Africa could have bought the world’s poorest and politically susceptible continent an advantage. However, a combination of unpreparedness and the severity of COVID-19’s impact left Africa with no such advantage.
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Except perhaps South Africa, credible statistics on the extent of the COVID-19 infection in African countries are lacking. So far, African countries could not sustain two full months of lockdown. Unlike the rest of the developed world, there were no significant palliatives for ordinary citizens, let alone businesses or corporations. While industrialised countries compute their GDP contraction arising from COVID-19 in the range of 10%, virtually all of Africa is faced with the stark reality of an upward of 20% drop in their GDP and a total rollback of economic progress of the past two decades.
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In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world continues to overlook the epidemic raging on in some of the poorest regions of Africa since 2013: the Ebola outbreak. The Ebola virus is a severe disease with a death rate of up to 90% in humans. The virus was first identified in 1976 with two simultaneous outbreaks; one in the Yambuku village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the other in a remote area of Sudan.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly having an effect on the human population around the world, but its impact on the environment, especially in terms of conservation, is less publicized. The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest rainforest. According to scientists, its preservation is vital to combat global warming. However, illegal logging practices continue to jeopardize the integrity of the rainforest at this time.
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As an African and a Canadian, I inhabit an observatory. I am a resident in two worlds of blunt contrasts. On a good note, daily at every turn, those contrasts offer privileged lessons on the richness and complexity of the human experience, of our world. In this observatory, it is irresistible not to have a geopolitical perspective on the dynamic of Africa’s relationship with the global south. And since the formal declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 by WHO’s Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the reality of that stark contrast has never been more evident.
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The Third Industrial Revolution (3IR) provided perhaps the most significant insights into Africa’s potential to fast-track its march to sustainable development. As with industrial revolutions, the 3IR has further tinkered with international division of labour. Gradually, Africa and indeed economies hitherto considered as periphery – so-called because they were traditional sources of raw materials – are now actors in knowledge-driven competition, which is the hallmark of the 3IR.
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The third industrial revolution (3IR) provided perhaps the most significant insights into Africa’s potential to fast-track its sustainable development. As with previous industrial revolutions, the 3IR has affected the international division of labour. Gradually, Africa and a number of economies on the periphery – so described because they were traditional sources of raw materials – have become actors in a knowledge-driven competition, which is the hallmark of the 3IR.
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Indian Journal of Law and Technology
Vol. 14, Issue 2 (2018)
The triumph of capitalism and its impact, post-cold war, is manifest in diverse ways and sites in the global south, especially Africa. Perhaps the most prominent consequence of the post-cold war capitalist strangle-hold is the phenomenon of globalization. In its legal and economic gradient, globalization has yielded unprecedented spate of legal harmonization and capitalist structuring, opening up of markets under the trade liberalization mantra.
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In Inclusive Trade in Africa: The Continental Free Trade Area in Comparative Perspective
David Luke and Jamie Macleod, eds.
(New York: Routledge, 2019)
Co-authored w/ Caroline Ncube, Jeremy de Beer & Tobias Schonwetter
Open AIR (African Innovation Research) Network
Working Paper No. 19 (2018)