Uchenna Ugwu writing in Open Air:
In 2012, a civil society group called the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), raised concerns about a draft Africa Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) plant variety protection protocol. AFSA was concerned,
“[this law would] make it illegal for farmers to engage in their age-old practice of freely using, sharing and selling seeds/propagating material; a practice that underpins 90% of the smallholder agriculture systems in sub-Saharan Africa.” (IP Watch, October 2013)
The concerns raised by AFSA highlight the challenges faced by many African countries in determining how they can protect informal innovative knowledge and practices, when multilateral intellectual property (IP) regulations only recognize formal technological inventions...[more]