Global economies are still reeling from the harsh realities occasioned by the Covid-19 and its attendant variants.
Combined with intensified adverse weather episodes and vaccine inequality in the global south, life has been tough for many.
Companies were impelled to shut down or downsize to remain afloat but the intervention was not without dire effects on employees, especially those in the informal sector.
Lives and jobs were lost and doors were shut for many dreams to shine.
As a measure to attenuate further spread of the dreaded virus, working from home became utter conscription.
An environment of solitude and hopelessness, as one could expect, is hardly one of the best moments to consolidate ideas or conceptualize them with the potential to monetize them.
It is within this hopeless state that ingenuity and invention proved critical, according to the World Intellectual Property Indicators report.
The report establishes China as a leading hub in a range of intellectual property concentrations.
World Intellectual Property Organization has been releasing the report, annually, since 2009.
Intellectual property refers to intangible intellectual works and takes many forms with certain countries and regions recognizing more categories than others.
Common among these include patents, utility designs, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, industrial designs and plant varieties.
Ownership of intellectual property rights positions inventors to gain from their creativity, giving them an edge over other frugality or competitors in a given defined product market.
WIPO collates patent filing activity from national and regional IP offices.
It is ensconced through the report that two in every three patent filling activities across the world took place in Asia.
Patent filing activity in Europe plummeted in several categories.
United States Patent and Trademark Office trailed China across reported categories.
Informatively, the report indicates that variations in the patenting activity across countries and regions are a result of economies’ size and structure differentials.
As such, the report articulates, it is imperative to examine resident patent activity about variables such as population, research and development spending, and gross domestic product.
Considering that Asia accounted for 66 per cent of the world total patent filing activity, as aforementioned, this was driven by strong growth in filings in China, which last year accounted for 68.6 per cent of all applications filed in the region.
Offices in North America accounted for almost one-fifth (19.3 per cent) of the 2020 world total, while those in Europe accounted for just over one-tenth (10.9 per cent).
The combined share for Africa, LAC, and Oceania was 3.2 per cent.
The findings of the report show that Kenya, with 151 resident patents per GDP, is Africa’s finest.
However, the country is locked out of the geographical indication ranking that is provided in the report.
The geographical indication identifies a good as originating from a specific geographical area and possessing a given quality, reputation or other characteristics that are essentially attributable to that geographical origin.
Scrutiny is therefore needed to elicit insights on how entities of Kenyan origin can penetrate the GI category.
Scrutiny needed must account for Kenya’s comparative advantage and associated quality of techno-vision filings with the Kenya Industrial Property Institute and sister agencies such as the Kenya Copyright Board to unlock the country’s potential while ensuring enjoyment of rights by owners.
KIPI statistics reveal out of 1041 applications that were filed in 2019, only 230 were granted an equivalent of 22.1 per cent.
Inclusive was applications filed through and granted by the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization but of Kenyan origin.
Given the findings of the WIPI report, it requires a keen eye to understand its policy implications to the country, which should be examined on some scenarios, among other, short-term and long-term.
It also requires a multi-agency organ to examine its national and regional implications in terms of trade, employment or even debt.
That Kenya is Africa’s leader could be a signal of gains brought about by the manufacturing drive under the Big Four Agenda.
Be it as it may, a raft of national and regional measures are needed to consolidate gains and unlock her invention potential.
Early cues deductible from the report include the need to benchmark with Asia to determine whether the Competency-Based Curriculum could fit the bill in response to national and global challenges in the long run.
Understanding Asia’s education system could be the much-needed key that Kenya and Africa need to unlock their ability and capacity to continually innovate, creating new solutions to global challenges, among others, unemployment.
An in-depth examination of Africa’s performance to identify gaps and avenues for synergy could yield much-needed results.
Corporates, universities, schools, Technical and Vocational Education and Training institutions and research institutions should take a leading role in identifying inventors, mentoring and supporting them to unlock potential and access intellectual property rights for their inventions.
Unless proposed interventions are taken seriously, creativity opportunities will be missed and only Asia will continue to rise.
The writer is an economist
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
