14 Sep 2024

The Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Beauty Manake, has urged government department, parastatals and the private sector to recognize the critical importance of intellectual property (IP) and collaborate to leverage on opportunities presented by IP.

This was said at the inaugural Intellectual Property Pitso held in Gaborone on Tuesday, under the theme, “Harnessing IP for Economic Transformation.”

Ms Manake said the collective effort will determine and secure Botswana’s place in the global economy, citing that all should work together to secure a future where intellectual property was celebrated as Botswana’s new diamond.
She said IP has potential to diversify the economy and therefore the inaugural pitso marked the beginning of the many yet to follow every year come September.

Ms Manake said her ministry was mandated to coordinate intellectual property and ensure that indeed all key stakeholders involved had input in diversifying the economy through IP development by 2036.

She said in 2022 Parliament endorsed Botswana IP Policy which is now in its second year of implementation and looking to reduce dependency on diamonds and bring forth new inventions.

“In the past couple of months we’ve seen cultural events taking place across the country, where Batswana demonstrated their culture and indigenous knowledge, however most of these were undocumented and protected,” she said.

Ms Manake said this therefore called unto the ministry and its key stakeholders in IP development to embrace the IP in all these cultural events and support their growth toward commercialisation.

She said it was unfortunate that lack of documenting the IP represented by various cultures across the country gives way for appropriation of indigenous knowledge by foreigners without adequate compensation to the locals.

Ms Manake said the rich IP from diverse cultural backgrounds certainly has potential to diversify the economy and even introduce new industries such as home-made telenovela series which will introduce Botswana’s culture to the world.

She said currently the plentiful IP generated in various backgrounds was not protected, citing that CIPA budget ought to be increased to allow them to document cultural festivals found in all four corners of Botswana.

Ms Manake said these cultural festivals represented the basis of Batswana’s culture, who Batswana were and how best to sell the diverse cultures to the world and boost local economy.

Meanwhile, Registrar – Industrial Property CIPA, Mr Timothy Moalusi, said CIPA would not succeed alone in terms of generating new IP, therefore, he said they needed every institution and stakeholders to work with them.

Mr Moalusi said this was the reason why the IP Pitso was convened to deliberately have all stakeholders under one roof to share ideas as others were researchers, legal practitioners and business development experts who would certainly advise in translating the indigenous knowledge and make it commercial.

He said it was important to note that IP was property, however the nature of the property was intangible and therefore as one used their intellect he comes up with something he could own as intellectual property. He said once one entered in to the space of IP, it was important to realize that protection gives exclusive rights to stop other people from using, reproducing and distributing that property without one’s consent.

Mr Moalusi said the key thing was understanding that the IP owner has exclusive rights to respond to any form of infringement to his or her property. He said when one had IP, he could sell the property or license it to other people to use or commercialise, citing that it was ideal to protect IP as it gave fair return on investment.

The Pitso convened breakaway sessions, which targeted addressing IP-related issues such as generators, commercialisation, funding, enforcement and capacity building.