The first is the South African Journal of Intellectual Property Law (IPLJ), the only South African journal to focus solely in Intellectual Property law and policy issues, which is being edited by Lee-Ann Tong and Associate Professor Caroline Ncube. The second is the Journal of Comparative Law in Africa, whose editor-in-chief is Professor Salvatore Mancuso, Chair of the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa (CCLA).

The maiden issues of both journals appeared in 2013 and 2014 respectively.

The Olu Akinkugbe Business Law in Africa Fellowship will bring visiting researchers from other African countries to the CCLA for a six-week visit, focused on producing a paper for publication on a topical aspect of business law in Africa. The inaugural fellow is expected to arrive in October 2014.

The US$5 million TY Danjuma Fund for Law and Policy Development in Africa (TYD Fund), instituted by Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, will support CCLA research, capacity building and research-dissemination events. The TYD Fund provides sustained support for research that is aimed at addressing African issues with African solutions in response to the ongoing changes in the economic, social and political landscape of the continent, including the growing global investment interest in the continent.

CCLA chair Professor Salvatore Mancuso said that, when it comes to its legal traditions, Africa is not always given an equal footing. “It is assumed that Europeans – westerners – can speak for Africa, given that African legal systems are seen as a simple heritage of the former colonial powers, despite a rich, peculiar and variegated African legal culture. This is because it is assumed that there is no law out of what has been transplanted during and after the colonial period.” The fund will seek to change this by exploring new ways through which African countries can develop their legal systems to make them effective and responsive to contemporary developments on the continent and more broadly.

The symposium preceded a two-day consultation on fisheries crime convened by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in collaboration with the Interpol Environmental Crime Programme, through its Project Scale. One of the positive outcomes of the initiative is that IMEL, together with the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, received a generous grant from the Ministry of Fisheries in Norway to carry out this initiative – a three-year project commencing in 2014 .

In April 2014, Professor Mancuso was also appointed one of two co-ordinators of the thematic working group on Justice and the Rule of Law at the Global Forum on Law Justice and Development (GFLJD). Among other things, thematic working groups develop collaborative research projects for GFLJD members to promote knowledge exchange and improve development outcomes in the field of law and justice.

On the publications front, the first quarter of 2014 saw the publication of the first edition of CCLA’s new Journal of Comparative Law in Africa (JCLA), of which Professor Mancuso is the editor-in-chief, and in 2013 his book Terra in Africa: Diritto Fondiario Eritreo (Eritrean Land Law) (University of Trieste Press) was published. An updated edition to be published in English is planned for a later date. The inaugural edition of the JCLA features articles on various issues by contributors within and outside the African continent and aptly has as its debut article a keynote paper on Legal Education in an Era of Globalisation and the Challenge of Development by Professor Muna Ndulo, professor of law at Cornell Law School and director of the Institute for African Development at Cornell University.

Located in the UCT Faculty of Law, the CCLA addresses the need to devise contextually sound law and policy responses to pervasive developmental challenges facing Africa.

According to IP Watch, an influential Geneva-based publication, the conference is a who’s who of advocates in the access-to-knowledge and public-health fields who are interested in intellectual property issues.

“This event came at a crucial time when policymakers around the world acknowledge the need for more balanced and locally relevant IP laws that facilitate innovation and development, and respond appropriately to the challenges brought about by the digital age,” said Dr Tobias Schonwetter, director of the IP Unit.

The IP Unit strives to add an African voice to the global debate on IP-related issues. It aims to create a leading IP programme in Africa that translates cutting-edge research into excellent teaching and increases the number of highly-skilled African IP experts. The unit also administers the Open African Innovation Research and Training (Open AIR) Network, one of Africa’s largest IP networks, which seeks to investigate how IP regimes can be harnessed in Africa to facilitate innovation through collaboration – and to make processes more participatory, knowledge more accessible, and benefits more widely shared.

Featured image: An unusual element of the “Open AIR Conference” was a dramatic representation of research results.

Dr Shaw, who is currently the Director: Crime, Communities and Conflict at STATT Consulting in Hong Kong, is noted as a scholar with an outstanding international profile. His research grapples with contemporary and highly relevant issues of security and justice – not just in South Africa, but on the African continent. He has published more than 16 manuscripts in international journals and written 26 books and 22 chapters in books.

Six chapters of the preliminary report, highlighting some of the key issues that are problematic to the implementation of the RCMA and the rules of intestate succession, were presented by the researchers. A major output of this research is a book, the proposal of which has already been accepted by a prominent publisher.