Professor Chidi Oguamanam has been named to the University of Ottawa's University Research Chair in Sustainable Bio-Innovation, Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Global Knowledge Governance. Research Chairs represent the University's top researchers and recognize their outstanding and important accomplishments.
Read MoreMay 30-June 3, 2022: Delegates met in-person and virtually at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva to resume the second round of negotiations for the 2022-23 biennium of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (WIPO-IGC). The meeting being the second in the ‘post-pandemic’ era was dedicated to negotiations on genetic resources. It was the last meeting on the subject under the 2022-2023 biennium. The remaining meetings of the Committee for the biennium are dedicated to Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions (aka folklore).
Read MoreIndigenous peoples all over the world have adverse relationships with research and researchers. Historically, research involving Indigenous peoples is conducted at the intersection of colonialism and asymmetrical power relations amongst researchers, industries, colonial states, and other stakeholders. The importance of research in shaping the policy agenda for development, access to health, basic infrastructure and for the empowerment of communities for self-determination is not lost on Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples and many other local and marginalized communities have been proverbial guinea pigs for researchers, being ‘used’ as research subjects whose rights were abused without consequences. Regarded as docile subjects, their voices were hardly heard, making them one of the most researched and yet underrepresented demographics in research.
Read MoreOn February 14th 2022, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey announced the signing of term sheets for a $1-billion federal investment and a $1-billion federal loan guarantee for the Muskrat Falls Project. This is the third such guarantee the federal government has backed in respect of the project. It marks the completion of the negotiation process for the deal. Premier Furey labelled the deal “the next step for all of us to emerge from under the dark shadow of Muskrat Falls.”
Read MoreFebruary 28-March 4, 2020: Delegates met virtually and in-person at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva to resume the first round of negotiations for the 2022-23 biennium of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC). The meeting was in continuation of more than two-decades of work, most of which has been dedicated to negotiations of legal instrument(s) for the protection of traditional knowledge (TK) traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) and genetic resources (GR).
Read MoreThe impacts of climate change are wide-ranging and global, with examples ranging from increased wildfires, food insecurity due to poor crop yield, and forced migration following rising sea levels, droughts, and other abnormal precipitation. In the face of these changes, Indigenous peoples and communities are heavily impacted through changes in lifestyle and knowledge. However, Indigenous peoples and Indigenous traditional knowledge (ITK) may hold part of the important keys to fighting climate change for the benefit of the planet.
Read MoreAs the vaccination rate rises in Canada and other developed nations, developing countries globally continue to record an upsurge in daily infection and death rates due to COVID-19. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently confirmed that Canada is involved in the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) exploration of the Indian and South African proposal to waive intellectual property (IP) rights for COVID-19 vaccines. In a break from tradition, United States President Joe Biden has lent his country’s support to the initiative, amidst reluctance to do the same from the EU. However, Canada remains ambivalent.
Read MoreCanada lacks a comprehensive federal Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) system for governing genetic resources and the associated traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples, despite years of advocacy. While there is currently an interdepartmental committee on ABS at the federal level that collaborates with provincial and territorial jurisdictions and a lot more diverse initiatives related to ABS, little progress has been made.
Read MoreInnovation 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.
Read MoreNigeria’s booming film industry, colloquially known as Nollywood, has become one of the most influential in the world, and one of Nigeria’s largest economic sectors. University of Ottawa Professor Dr Chidi Oguamanam, working as part of the Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network, examines Nollywood as an example of how innovation, openness and entrepreneurship have unfolded in this unique context. Relying on extensive data collection, including in-depth interviews with key players in the industry, Oguamanam traces Nollywood’s origins and demonstrates how its persistent openness—to local popular culture, to myriad modes of marketing, to both formal and informal skills development, to Nigeria’s multiethnic realities, and to various approaches to intellectual property—have all contributed to its success at local, national, continental and global levels.
Read More“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.
Read MoreOn Feb. 21, 2021, Israel introduced “green passes” – evidence of COVID-19 vaccination or presumed immunity after recovery from the disease. This form of certificate is called by several other names, most notably immunity passports. According to the global vaccine alliance GAVI, “an immunity passport is an official document that certifies an individual has been infected and is purportedly immune from SARS CoV-2.”
Read MoreMedical racism against Indigenous peoples is a fact in the Canadian healthcare system. As a direct result of this experience, many Indigenous peoples lack trust in the healthcare system, and they limit their engagement with the system as much as possible. This has caused many detrimental impacts on Indigenous peoples, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted an area of key concern – vaccine hesitancy within Indigenous peoples.
Read MoreOpen AIR (African Innovation Research) Network
Working Paper No. 24 (2021)
Co-authored with Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu and Vedaste Ndungutse
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.
Read MoreExcept 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.
Read MoreWith the world on edge as the COVID-19 crisis progresses, the scientific community has sprung into gear in search of an effective treatment. R&D is progressing at unprecedented speeds, abridging the projected length for the completion of a vaccine from over a decade to just over a year. Amidst this rapid development, traditional knowledge plays a significant role in scientific endeavours. Through traditional knowledge, medical researchers can gain guidance and inspiration and bypass prolonged and expensive scatter-gun approaches to R&D.
Read MoreIn 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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