A2K4D Discusses Research, Advocacy and Policy at AUC

Thursday, June 19, 2014

By Nourhan Abdel Hamid, Tarek Beltagy, Nora Seweify and Mahmoud Elsaeid

 

 
   Cairo, Egypt - On Monday, June 16, 2014, three diverse scholars discussed Research, Advocacy and Policy during Access to Knowledge for Development’s (A2K4D) fourth Annual Workshop. The workshop was held at the American University in Cairo’s Moataz El-Alfi Hall, and consisted of five sessions.

    
The fifth and final session of the workshop included three speakers who each gave their own insights about the topic. The three speakers were: Heba Ghannam, a community outreach manager at Tahrir Academy, Pranesh Prakash, an Access to Knowledge Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project and Tobias Schonwetter, director of the Intellectual Property Law and Policy Unit at the University of Cape Town's law faculty.

 Schonwetter mentioned during the session, “Policy makers don’t necessarily come from the same area,” and seeing how diverse the panel at this session was; his point was proven right.

 The three critical thinkers spoke about the importance of research and what each of them are doing or aim to do in order to reach their initiative. All the speakers adopted different techniques and had diverse approaches towards their research; however they each made compelling arguments.

 Prakash mentioned how he believes that his approach is much more research oriented; not to say that advocacy is not important. However, he explained that achieving thorough research is the main aspect in his point of view.

 “Our dream is to have a new Egyptian generation of critical thinkers,” Ghannam said. She then went on to discuss how she wants her project to influence every child in the country, as one can’t expect to have new innovators if the material being taught to them is outdated. Her initiative has adopted new and fun ways of teaching kids, which have enabled children to learn in diverse ways.

 Another important point was one raised by Schonwetter, which was “Don’t preach to the choir.” This point was emphasized throughout the entire conference, seeing as what good would it make if one addresses people who already have an idea.

 Schonwetter also mentioned how fixing instead of solving is the main aim that should be achieved. Throughout this session, there were several questions, such as; does the law have to change before research is done? How can these scholars influence the government? And how long will it take for an actual change to happen? These questions were certainly answered by the panel with emphasis on research, advocacy and policy.

Open A.I.R. Comes to A2K4D Workshop at AUC

By Mirit Agaiby, Seif Issa, Wadie Zakhary and Yasmin Ashmawy

Cairo, Egypt - Law and business faculty members in the annual Access 2 Knowledge 4 Development Workshop discussed intellectual property and innovation to enhance development in Africa, on Monday, June 16, 2014, at the American University in Cairo.

Members of the Open African Innovation Research Network (Open A.I.R.) who joined the session as panelists were: Nagham El Houssamy, as chair, and Nagla Rizk, an economics professor from AUC’s School of Business. Faculty of Law members at the University of Ottawa, Canada, Jeremy de Beer and Chidi Oguamanam, were also present. The other panelists included Research Fellow Douglas Gichuki from Center for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law at Strathmore University, Kenya, and Dick Kawooya, assistant professor at University of South Carolina, United States.

Open A.I.R. aspires to better the economies of African countries through emphasizing the evolution of knowledge governance, innovation and intellectual property, starting now until the year 2035.

The workshop’s focus was to discuss the two books that the panelists either co-authored or edited: “Innovation & Intellectual Property: Collaborative Dynamics in Africa,” and “Knowledge & Innovation in Africa: Scenarios for the Future.”

The presenters displayed two short movies, explaining their developmental works in Africa, and summarized the findings of both books.

The first book, “Innovation & Intellectual Property: Collaborative Dynamics in Africa,” tackles case studies on the complex relationships between innovation and intellectual property from nine countries in Africa.

During the discussion of this book, Kawooya stressed on dividing “the Collabrative Intellectual Property into formal and informal interactions.”

“Knowledge & Innovation in Africa: Scenarios for the Future,” discussed three possible scenarios for Africa’s future; “wireless engagement,” “informal is the new formal,” and “sincerely, Africa.” Both books are available for free download.

Shirin Elahi, Open A.I.R Scenarios consultant, illustrated that everyone creates future scenarios in their own heads.

“If I do this, this might happen. Whilst if I do this decision, the route is more likely to be that,” Elahi explained in the video. 

Open A.I.R. spent three years researching scenarios in Africa to better predict the population’s future. Its first draft of the report on these scenarios was revealed at a conference in Cape Town in 2012. 

“We hope that this research would be very useful in practice. We did not do this research so that it could sit on libraries’ shelves,” related de Beer, during an interview.

Open A.I.R. will also participate in next year's A2K4D Workshop at AUC, which will be held in June 2015, to summarize their latest findings and research. 

Below is a slideshow with all the tweets that were live tweeted during the session.