Federal Government of Nigeria has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the UK based Developing Africa Group to create Africa’s first Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Commercialization project in Nigeria.
According to a statement signed by Head, Press and Public Relations Unit
FMITI, Ibrahim Haruna, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment Otunba Ricard Adeniyi Adebayo, CON disclosed this during the signing ceremony held recently in Abuja.
Adeniyi further explained that the MoU will allow the Group to use IPR as a means of resolving some of the issues and challenges facing Nigeria as well as create jobs and trade services.
The Minister who was represented at the occasion by the Registrar, Trademark, Shafiu Adamu Yauri, said the pilot project, structured for 3 Years, is designed to place International Property Right (IPR) directly into some of the key issues and challenges in Nigeria as it will take advantage of technology to address some of the issues surrounding unemployment and allow rural communities in Nigeria to start attracting commercial interests.
He said: “Since trademarks are crucial to the promotion of trade and economic development, and Nigeria happens to be one of the strong regional hubs of trade in Africa being the continent’s biggest economy, it is no surprise that it has attracted the world’s IP governing body in Abuja, as Nigeria hosted one of the only two World Intellectual Property Office’s (WIPO) External Offices in Africa. The other is hosted in Algiers, Algeria.This project according to him will assist the Registry of Trademarks in the effective administration and enforcement of Trademarks rights in Nigeria.
“Africa, in general, and Nigeria, in particular, faces an enormous challenge of industrialisation and unemployment generation given the significant population growth. The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that youth unemployment is twice as high as that of adults and that young people account for approximately 60 per cent of the Continent’s jobless population stressing that, the problem is only set to become more acute given estimates that some 12 million young people on the Continent enter the job market each year.”
