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H.E. Ato Desse, Minister of Science and Technology,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure for me to have this opportunity to speak at this WIPO Regional Conference on Technology and Innovation Support being held here in Addis Ababa. I would like to say a few words on behalf of the Japanese Government, which is supporting this conference through the WIPO Japan Fund.
To begin with, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office (EIPO) for co-organizing this conference as part of the WIPO Japan Fund program. It is quite timely that this meeting is held here as Ethiopia is now pursuing an industrialization policy as clearly stated in the Growth and Transformation Plan.
Japan is fully aware of the importance of intellectual property as a valuable tool to promote industrialization, based upon its own experiences in the 1950s and 60s when it rebuilt its devastated economy after WWII. It is for this reason that Japan is extending assistance to African countries for developing or improving an intellectual property protection scheme. Intellectual property is important for Africa to ensure self-sustainable development for several reasons.
First, with the proper protection of intellectual property, invention and innovation will be encouraged.
Second, by establishing and registering original brands or trademarks, local industries would have greater opportunities to expand their businesses.
Third, with an improved intellectual property protection scheme, foreign investment would be encouraged to flow in.
Based upon this philosophy and in accordance with the Yokohama Action Plan of TICAD IV, Japan initiated the establishment of a Trust Fund in WIPO in JFY2008. The purpose of this Fund is to help facilitate capacity building related to intellectual property in Africa and other developing countries.
In more concrete terms, this Fund has three major objectives.
The first is to raise public awareness, particularly that of policy makers, government officials, manufacturers, traders, artists and so on, that great benefits for economic development can be achieved through industrial property protection and the effective use of the scheme.
The second is to assist target countries to enact industrial property protection laws and to establish institutions to implement the said laws.
The third is capacity building for sectors in charge of administration and utilization of the industrial property protection scheme. This will be undertaken in close cooperation with the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) and the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO).
Individual programs to be supported by this Fund will be decided by WIPO in cooperation with the Japan Patent Office (JPO), based upon concrete requests for assistance from African countries. In the JFY2010 work plan of the WIPO Japan Fund, the following activities are given priority.
The first is public awareness programs aimed at combating counterfeit products flowing in from overseas.
The second is programs which encourage creativity, invention and innovation into entrepreneurship through intellectual property protection.
The third is fellowship programs for future leaders so that they have full understanding of the importance of intellectual property rights in the context of the overall economic as well as science and technology policies.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Starting today, I imagine that intensive and substantive discussions will take place at this conference during the following three days. Useful demonstrations are also scheduled on how best to retrieve and use intellectual property information from databases. I believe that information sharing is the first important step to raise our own awareness of the importance of intellectual property rights. This is why we are gathered here today at this conference.
I do hope all the participants take advantage of this conference to gather information for their own needs so that the knowledge gap existing between Africa and the rest of the world, and even between African countries, could be reduced. It is my strong desire that improved intellectual property protection will help lead to self-sustainable development of Africa in the coming years.
Thank you for your kind attention.
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