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December 4, 2008
Source:
SciDevNet
by Linda Nordling
A blueprint for a pan-African organisation that would promote
cooperation on intellectual property issues was sent back to the
drawing board this week, dashing hopes that it could be signed
off by presidents in January.
The decision to revise the plan was made by the steering
committee of the African Ministerial Council for Science and
Technology (AMCOST) bureau, which met in Abuja, Nigeria, from
3–4 December.
African science ministers had agreed to establish a Pan-African
Intellectual Property Organisation (PAIPO) in the run-up to an
African presidential meeting in January 2007. Among other
things, it is hoped that the organisation will promote the
protection of traditional knowledge and genetic resources.
Coming up with an appropriate design has been a difficult and
time-consuming process, the Abuja meeting heard. The blueprint
presented to the meeting had been drawn up in consultation with
stakeholders, including existing intellectual property
organisations on the continent.
But delegates in Abuja found the blueprint too top-heavy since
it proposes the establishment of a new ministerial forum, the
African Ministerial Council for Intellectual Property. But
delegates to the meeting said such a forum would make PAIPO too
bureaucratic.
"This is the kind of organisation that we set up in Africa, and
they don't work," says Crispus Kiamba, permanent secretary of
Kenya's Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology and
the chair of the AMCOST steering committee.
Hakim Elwaer, director of the African Union (AU) science and
technology department, agreed. "This will not work in this
shape," he told the meeting.
The decision to make the revisions is not a big setback says
Khalil Timamy, coordinator of the AU Science and Technology
Commission in Lagos, Nigeria, who led work on the blueprint.
"All that we are discussing now is governance. The rest has been
agreed on," he told SciDev.Net.
The AU Commission said it hoped that the final version could be
passed for sign-off to an African heads of state summit taking
place in six months' time.
"Even if it takes another year, it will still have been a fast
process to set this up," Timamy says.
Once the blueprint of PAIPO has been agreed, heads of state will
determine where its secretariat should be located. PAIPO will be
funded by the AU. |
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