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On December 30 2002, a day after my return from Uganda, my wife and I breakfasted at Steers in Nairobi, just a few hours before attending the inauguration of Mr Mwai Kibaki as the third president of the Republic of Kenya. The atmosphere was ecstatic. Just a few days before there had been fears of a civil war and now the streets were awash with jubilant crowds rushing up to Uhuru Park for the inauguration. Everyone was now talking of the great future. Just then, a young lady walked into the restaurant and my wife immediately remembered her as her old friend from their tertiary school years and hometown of Mombasa. With all the excitement, she called her to come to our table so that she could introduce her to me. After some introductions in Kiswahili and a few Arabian jokes, the young lady said the inauguration of Mr Kibaki as Rais watatu marked a turning point in the history of Kenya. Now donors would start pouring money in the country and the future looked bright. Although disturbed by her opinion, I asked her politely why it seemed Africa could not be weaned from the habit of hoping for foreign aid? Did it not seem an insult to our intelligence that in a continent with vast natural and mineral resources, an educated, creative, and innovative people, we were still failing to bring ourselves out of poverty? We were faced with inadequate foreign direct investment; there were disparities in trade between us and the developed countries; there was massive brain drain to the industrialised nations and we were still battling with the debt crisis. For over three decades now, Africa, like all other continents of the world, has been the recipient of "development and technical assistance" or international aid and yet it remains the poorest with half of its total population living on less than US$1 a day in purchase power parity terms. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) statistics, technical assistance, now known as "technical co-operation" expenditure, in 1999 totalled US$14,3 billion. Baris et al (2002) say the figure could even be more than US$24,6 billion if personnel and training investment and other projects are included. Of the US$14,3 billion, about US$3 billion went to sub-Saharan Africa. Why then has Africa failed to leapfrog the years of economic stagnation if not decline? Has Africa been receiving adequate international aid? If not, has this been due to our failure to articulate our needs to the donors or the donors� failure to understand Africa�s position? It poses a number of questions, still. Does Africa really need aid? If so, in what aspects of development and on what conditions? Who shall determine what Africa wants and who shall choose the path for its development, its political, social and economic destiny? All these questions are enmeshed in Africa�s struggle for technical and economic independence. The idea of development and technical co-operation was to bring up the level of development in the least developed countries, achieve economic progress and reduce poverty. This was good. What was wrong was the methodology. African governments argue that they had no choice but to accept donor funding even though the areas of development and conditions were dictated upon them. In wanting to verify these allegations, I had an opportunity to discuss the matter with a representative of the World Bank some three years ago. He told me that the problem with Africa was that only a few governments, and that included Zimbabwe, could write their own economic development plans whilst the rest left it to the multilateral organisations. So, by failing to articulate their needs to the donors, Africa continues to receive inadequate foreign aid. On the other hand, it is argued that the donor agencies handed down their blueprint because they believed the least developed countries could quickly achieve growth if they were modelled on the experiences of the industrialised nations. Also their taxpayers, to whom they were accountable, were familiar with their own models and would quickly agree to their money being spent on systems that mimicked their own. What they forgot was that duplicating projects from one African country to another would paralyse trade and result in slow economic growth for Africa. A simple illustration of how this works can be taken from the informal sector where enterprises are failing to grow into big business because shop after shop they are producing the same goods that become difficult to sell. These products have no trademarks to differentiate them from each other. Use of trademarks pushes up sales as customers identify themselves with the mark. If, for example, Eric Pemberton had not designed the trademark Coca-Cola to protect his invention, the Coca-Cola company could not have survived and any other person could have produced a similar drink and fooled the world that they were drinking Coca-Cola. Trademarks also force the manufacturer to improve the quality and performance of his product so as to keep his customers� loyalty and also widen his market share. Some of the popular trademarks which have contributed to high sales and growth in business are Shell, Coca-Cola and Nandos. Entrepreneurs in the informal sector are also failing to register their industrial designs to stop the copying of each other�s products. This is killing their businesses, but it is largely due to lack of knowledge on intellectual property protection. It is very sad because the Patents and Trademarks Office has existed in Zimbabwe for more than 100 years and yet people are not making use of it. To encourage the use of trademarks in the informal sector and help them achieve growth, the Zimbabwe Association of Inventors, through its IP design section, is now offering design services to enterprises in the informal sector. Due to lack of use of intellectual property system by the indigenous people of Africa, African Patent and Trademarks Offices remain active in registering the protection of inventions, industrial designs and trademarks from the industrialised nations. This disparity has been due to lack of education and awareness on intellectual property among communities as well as lack of incentives to inventors and this has negative impact on trade. In Zimbabwe for instance, inventors are withholding from registering their inventions because they fear that as long as money is not available for research and development, their patents will go into public domain, be taken up by international companies with the money who will develop them abroad and sell them back to Africa at high costs and without benefit to them and their country. The point is well understood. Africa has the necessary intellectual, human and social capital to achieve development and reduce poverty. What is ironic is that Patent Offices in Africa receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually from foreign inventors and corporations in the form of patent fees, trademarks and industrial design fees and yet no portion of that money is made available for research, development and commercialisation of local inventions. Either African governments do not see the connection and benefit that will accrue or they just decide to ignore it altogether. As a matter of principle, is it not logical and would it not benefit Africa or the individual states, if a percentage of what is coming from foreign inventors was made available to benefit local inventions? How can African inventors continue to moan over lack of funding when their kindred from Europe, America and Asia continue to pour millions of dollars into Africa in the form of patent and trademarks fees annually? Although inventions development is not a responsibility of the patent protection system, the African situation creates new challenges not only to African governments but also to ARIPO, OAPI and WIPO. Perhaps there is an urgent need for a new protocol to solve this African crisis. Once inventors are able to commercialise their inventions, they shall have an incentive to continue inventing and making use of the intellectual property system as well as contributing to their countries� gross domestic product (GDP). The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
