Story by Fungai Jachi
VISITING World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Director General, Dr Daren Tang, has met the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science, and Technology Development, Ambassador Frederick Shava to discuss how the global organisation can help Zimbabwe commercialise local innovations.
The Ministry which is driving Zimbabwe’s innovation and industrialisation agenda is exploring possible areas of collaboration in the intellectual property landscape.
The engagement seamlessly aligns with Zimbabwe’s drive towards local production, industrialisation, technology development, and value addition under Vision 2030, hence the need to invest in the robust protection of intellectual property, which is the true currency of modern industrialisation.
“Your rural industrialisation initiative is interesting to us and that will be an exciting new ground for us. This would require more of marketing and we would like to ensure that Zimbabwe would protect its innovations. This is exciting because we want to see these developments cascading to the rural communities. We are excited to be working together,” Dr Tang said.
Ambassador Shava says Zimbabwe is moving towards commercialisation of its innovations, hence the need for a modern Intellectual Property (IP) framework.
“Our target under the National Development Strategy 2 is bold and deliberate with at least one operational rural industry in each province, anchored on local innovation, technology transfer and intellectual property-protected products. We will need WIPO’s experience to craft intellectual property-enabled rural industrial models that are replicable.
“Zimbabwe is increasing investment in research and innovation and this public investment must translate into measurable economic returns. We request WIPO’s technical support to assist in establishing best-practice indicators for commercialisation in training our institutions on intellectual property valuation and in setting up knowledge management systems that quantify the economic dividend of intellectual property investments.”
A strong IP system ensures local value stays local and innovators are rewarded for their efforts.
