Browsing by Author "De Beer, Jeremy"

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) Deployments in Africa: Benefits, Challenges and Policy Dimensions
(2020-12-15) Gwagwa, Arthur; Kraemer-Mbula, Erika; Rizk, Nagla; Rutenberg, Isaac; De Beer, Jeremy
The deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is proliferating on the African continent, but policy responses are still at their early stages. This article provides an overview of the main elements of AI deployment in Africa, AI’s core benefits and challenges in African settings, and AI’s core policy dimensions for the continent. It is argued that for AI to build, rather than undermine, socio-economic inclusion in African settings, policymakers need to be cognisant of the following key dimensions: gender equity, cultural and linguistic diversity, and labour market shifts.
Copyright and Education in Africa: Lessons on African Copyright and Access to Knowledge
(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2010-02-15) Schonwetter, Tobias; De Beer, Jeremy; Kawooya, Dick; Prabhala, Achal
Dataset for AJIC Issue 22 (2018) article entitled "Evolution of Africa’s Intellectual Property Treaty Ratification Landscape"
(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2018-12-07) De Beer, Jeremy; Baarbé, Jeremiah; Ncube,Caroline; Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network
This open access dataset is described and analysed in the following article: De Beer, J., Baarbé, J., & Ncube, C. (2018). Evolution of Africa’s intellectual property treaty ratification landscape. The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC), 22, 53-82. https://doi.org/10.23962/10539/26173 . The data is a subset of the Open AIR network’s research project data holding via a working paper entitled The Intellectual Property Treaty Landscape in Africa, 1885 to 2015 by Jeremy de Beer, Jeremiah Baarbé, Caroline Ncube, working paper 4, published online 5 May 2017, http://www.openair.org.za/publications/the-intellectual-property-treaty-landscape-in-africa-1885-to-2015/ . Open Air is a network of African researchers in the University of Ottawa in Canada, the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Strathmore University in Kenya, the Nigerian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, and the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Its purpose is to answer two major research questions in order to ensure that African knowledge and innovation is not lost in the knowledge economy. The major research questions are: 1 How can open collaborative innovation help businesses scale up and seize the new opportunities of a global knowledge economy? And 2. Which knowledge governance policies will best ensure that the social and economic benefits of innovation are shared inclusively? (Openair Network , 10 Dec 11:12 am http://www.openair.org.za/about-us/ ) Under this overarching framework: the specific research question is whether it is correct that local Intellectual policy making was “constrained to some extent by the powerful global IP governance schemata.”( De Beer, J., Baarbé, J., & Ncube, C. 2018) To answer this question a historical systematic review of IP treaties along with the extents and dates of ratification via electronic scraping. Specifically, researchers wished to explore whether the tension that they saw between countries who’s “International commitments harmonized in intellectual property treaties exist in tension with local needs for flexibility”. (De Beer et al., 2018) could be supported quantitatively. This project created simple quantitative data out of qualitative lists of policies along with the presence or absence of ratification by African countries. The source of the data is the UN Convention on World Intellectual Property Organization( WIPO) database which has tables listing parties to the treaty, as well as the date of signature, filling of legal instrument used to ratify the treaty and entry into force. These terms are defined in the Glossary attached. Data collected by hand is from the Nagoya Protocol, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, and International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). UPOV data is defined in the explanatory note attached. The data contains Six major variables: Country name, Treaty name, Date of Treaty, ratification by country, IP Regime defined in legal terms i.e. copyright, Colonising state. The minor variables is the Official Language. The main independent variable was 36 treaties of which two were excluded as not yet being in force at the time of data collection. The major dependent variable was the date of ratification by country present in WIPO database. Total data was 485 ratifications by the 34 countries thus creating 16 490 geographical- time data points.
Evolution of Africa’s Intellectual Property Treaty Ratification Landscape
(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2018-12-07) De Beer, Jeremy; Baarbé, Jeremiah; Ncube, Caroline
Intellectual property (IP) policy is an important contributor to economic growth and human development. However, international commitments harmonised in IP treaties often exist in tension with local needs for flexibility. This article tracks the adoption of IP treaties in Africa over a 131-year span, from 1884 to 2015, through breaking it down into four periods demarcated by points in time coinciding with key events in African and international IP law: the periods 1884–1935, 1936–1965, 1966–1995, and 1996¬–2015. The article explores relevant historical and legal aspects of each of these four periods, in order to assess and contextualise the evolutions of the IP treaty landscape on the continent. The findings show that treaties now saturate the IP policy space throughout the continent, limiting the ability to locally tailor approaches to knowledge governance.
Open Innovation and Knowledge Appropriation in African Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs)
(2015-12-15) De Beer, Jeremy; Armstrong, Chris
This article seeks enhanced understanding of the dynamics of open innovation and knowledge appropriation in African settings. More specifically, the authors focus on innovation and appropriation dynamics in African micro and small enterprises (MSEs), which are key engines of productivity on the continent. The authors begin by providing an expansion of an emergent conceptual framework for understanding intersections between innovation, openness and knowledge appropriation in African small-enterprise settings. Then, based on this framework, they review evidence generated by five recent case studies looking at knowledge development, sharing and appropriation among groups of small-scale African innovators. The innovators considered in the five studies were found to favour inclusive, collaborative approaches to development of their innovations; to rely on socially-grounded information networks when deploying and sharing their innovations; and to appropriate their innovative knowledge via informal (and, to a lesser extent, semi-formal) appropriation tools.
A Proposed “Agricultural Data Commons” in Support of Food Security
(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2019-06-28) Baarbé, Jeremiah; Blom, Meghan; De Beer, Jeremy
This article identifies a data governance model that could help reduce dataset access inequities currently experienced by smallholder farmers in both developed-world and developing-world settings. Agricultural data is globally recognised for its importance in addressing food insecurity, with such data generated and used by a value chain of contributors, collectors, and users. Guided by the modified institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, our study considered the features of agricultural data as a “knowledge commons” resource. The study also looked at existing data collection modalities practiced by John Deere, Plantwise and Abalobi, and at the open data distribution modalities available under the Creative Commons and the Open Data Commons licensing frameworks. The study found that an “agricultural data commons” model could give greater agency to the smallholder farmers who contribute data. A model open data licence could be used by data collectors, supported by a certification mark and a dedicated public interest organisation. These features could engender an agricultural data commons that would be advantageous to the three key stakeholders in agricultural data: data contributors, who need engagement, privacy, control, and benefit-sharing; small and medium-sized-enterprise (SME) data collectors, who need sophisticated legal tools and an ability to brand their participation in opening data; and data users, who need open access.
A Taxonomy to Understand Scaling of Innovation by African Enterprises
(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2021-05-31) Armstrong, Chris; De Beer, Jeremy
Grounded in empirical research findings and key statements in the literature, this article proposes a four-part taxonomy for mapping African knowledge-based enterprises’ efforts to achieve scale. The taxonomy, adapted from the framework proposed by Uvin et al. (2000), is comprised of scaling by expanding coverage; by broadening activities; by changing behaviour; and by building sustainability. The article sets out the framework and provides examples of the four scaling dimensions from empirical research conducted in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Botswana, and South Africa.