Access to Knowledge in Africa: The Role of Copyright

Last weekend, the book Access to Knowledge in Africa: The Role of Copyright (ISBN:978-1-91989-545-1) was launched at the 2010 Cape Town Book Fair. The book is the result of an international and interdisciplinary research project known as the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project. The book, co-edited by the UCT IP Law & Policy Research Unit’s Dr Tobias Schonwetter, gives the reader an understanding of the legal and practical issues posed by copyright for access to learning materials in Africa, and identifies the relevant lessons, best policies and best practices that would broaden and deepen this access. According to Sisule Musungu, President of IP think tank IQsensato in Geneva, Switzerland, the content of this book is unique “because the work summarised in [it] provides evidence both for policymaking and of the impacts of copyright in the real world”. The book is published by UCT Press in association with the International Development Research Centre, the Shuttleworth Foundation and WITS University’s LINK Centre. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 South Africa Licence, and an electronic version of the book can be downloaded here.