This chapter examines the unusual extension of imperial intellectual property laws to British colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, critically appraising how British dominion shaped domestic intellectual property laws and culture, and its impact on the social and economic development of African nations. It argues that contrary to the narrative that there was no apparent imperial strategy as to the development of colonial intellectual property laws, there seems to have been a certain arrangement regarding Africa, which cannot be merely coincidental. Intellectual property laws were imposed on Sub-Saharan Africa, not borrowed, and there must have been a reason for this. Yet unlike other Crown colonies, the Imperial government did not build local capacity nor institutions for intellectual property in Africa. This led to displaced local knowledge governance and innovation systems, and countries ill-equipped to handle the pressures of the twenty-first-century intellectual property system -leading to adherence and compliance overdrive in the post-TRIPS era.
This chapter examines critically the role of technical assistance in the implementation and expansion of intellectual property (IP) norms in Africa, using the protection of plant variety as an illustrative example. It focuses mainly on technical assistance from the World Intellectual Property Organization and the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. Relying on Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship and doctrine, it traces the origins of IP technical assistance and its role in the institution of IP norms and protection in Africa. The chapter further discusses the fragmented and complex regime of IP laws in Africa, and finally, the place of technical assistance in the burgeoning plant variety regime on the continent. The central claim is that technical assistance should be seen as a vector of ideas and practices that have progressively led to the systemic integration of African countries into the international IP system ("adherence overdrive") and the curious case of countries that inadvertently neglect the flexibilities inherent in the IP system when formulating national laws and policy ("compliance overdrive").
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