African countries asked to protect traditional Knowledge

African countries have been urged to develop legislative frameworks to protect traditional knowledge and folklore that recognize the collective nature of local innovation and promote its documentation for future enhancement.

The legal framework would also protect their development, application; encourage individual innovation and shield biodiversity as well as traditional knowledge from privatization.

Mr Emmanuel Kofi-Agyir Sackey, Chief Examiner in Charge of Industrial Property Directorate of African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO), said it was necessary to protect the rich culture of Africa since, it was gradually being lost.

Mr Sackey stated at the opening of a two-day national roving seminar on making better use of intellectual property for business competitiveness and development in Africa.

The workshop was organised by the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) in collaboration with Ghana’s Registrar Generals’ Department, the seminar is on the theme, “Protection and Utilisation of Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources and Expressions of Folklore”.

Mr Sackey explained that traditional knowledge has been extensively used to gain useful understanding of how ecological systems have generally worked and interrelated and the knowledge has contributed to the production in modern economy and played significant role in the Research and Development programmes of industry.

The traditional knowledge, he noted continued to be an element in the commercialization of natural products and currently supplied to commercial interests through databases, academic publications or field collection.

He said despite the important role of traditional knowledge, traditional communities have not been able to protect their knowledge through the existing intellectual property system owing to the failure of the knowledge to satisfy the requirements for intellectual property protection and it continued to be largely disregarded in development planning.

“Traditional knowledge is being lost under the impact of modernization and the ongoing globalization processes, yet, it may contribute to improved development strategies in several ways”, he added.

According to Mr Sackey, African countries are endowed with rich and highly diverse biological resources and traditional knowledge which have been practiced for centuries before the advent of colonialization.

He said this knowledge has reflected in the cumulative body of knowledge and beliefs handed down through generations by cultural transmission and the relationship of the local people with their own environment.

He expressed concern about the oral nature of the knowledge transmitted in various forms from past generations, which have largely been shared in unstructured contexts and this he noted has made it largely invisible to the development of the community and to science.

Mr Sackey called for the need to document and verifies the knowledge, put in national legislations on protection of the knowledge and give it international standards for harmonization on the protection of the knowledge.

Traditional knowledge when protected will among others preserve and conserve traditional knowledge, safeguard against third-party claims of Intellectual Property rights over traditional knowledge subject matter and protect distinctive traditional knowledge related commercial products.

He called for the creation of awareness among traditional holders including Traditional Health Practitioners on their rights and obligations whilst governments in Africa ensure the integration of traditional medical practice into the Health Delivery System as a matter of urgency, coordinate and develop partnerships among stakeholders and communities to present a united body of opinion.

Director-General of ARIPO, Dr Fernando Dos Santos who took participants through the Intellectual Property systems in Africa said the intellectual property played an important role in harnessing and rewarding human creations for social, cultural, economic and technological development, hence, the design of roving seminars to promote and use intellectual property in all the 19 member African states

Intellectual Property he said was an important resource for researchers and inventors, entrepreneurs and commercial enterprises as well as IP professionals.

It avoids duplicating research and development efforts, determine the protection of their IP rights, avoid infringing other’s IP rights, gain intelligence on the innovative activities and future direction of business, improve planning for business decisions and identify key trends in specific technical fields of public interest.

He called for more awareness creation on the need to implement intellectual property and urged countries to take advantages of the benefits of intellectual property.