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Director General ARIPO. Mr. Fernando Dos Santos.
The Guest of Honour, the Minister of Trade, Industry
and Marketing,Honourable Balozi Amina Salim Ali
The Representative of the Director General of the
World Intellectual property Organization (WIPO), Senior Counsellor at the
Africa Bureau, Mrs Joyce Banya
The First Secretary of the Embassy of Japan in
Tanzania, Mr. Yuji Nakayama,
The Executive Director of the Zanzibar Business
& Property Registration Agency, Mr Abulla Waziri Government Officials
The Former CEO of BRELA and also former Chairman of
the ARIPO Administrative Council, Mr. Esteriano Mahingila
Representatives of the Private Sector
Staff of the Registrar’ General Office
Colleagues from the ARIPO Secretariat;
Distinguished Participants;
Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is a great honor for me to make
a few remarks on behalf of the African Regional Intellectual Property
Organization (ARIPO) during this official opening ceremony of ARIPO, JPO and WIPO
National Roving Seminar on Intellectual Property that is taking place here in
Zanzibar today and tomorrow.
The ARIPO Roving Seminars were
devised with the aim to promote the use of IP in the ARIPO Member States. In
the last three years, this initiative covered fifteen countries and benefitted
directly more than two thousand and five hundred participants.
However, it’s worth highlighting that the seminar taking
place in Zanzibar involves our strategic partners in IP capacity building in
Africa, namely the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Japan
Patent Office who were kind enough to fund this event and participate in its
proceedings.
Before I elaborate further, allow
me firstly, to acknowledge with great appreciation, the presence of the Guest
of Honour, the Minister of Trade, Industry and Marketing of the Revolutionary
Government of Zanzibar, Honourable Balozi Amina Salim Alifor taking time off her
busy schedule to grace this occasion in person. Honourable Salim Ali is a great
friend of ARIPO and we were honoured to host her at ARIPO during the
celebration of the 40 years of the organization that took place in Harare in
December, 2016.
I would also like to express, Honourable
Minister,ARIPO‘s gratitude to you and the Government of the Revolutionary
Government of Zanzibar for accepting to host this event and for the continued
support that we receive from your Government.
Allow me also at this juncture to
express my deepest appreciation to the Executive Director of the Zanzibar
Business & Property Registration Agency, who is also a very active and long
serving Member of the Administrative Council of ARIPO, Mr Abulla Wazirifor
accepting to partner with us in the organization of this important event. I
would also like to thank himand hisable Staff for the excellent preparations
that have been made for the seminars and the hospitality accorded to me, my
colleagues from the ARIPO Secretariatand the representatives of strategic
partners since our arrival in Zanzibar.
Honourable Minister,
As I emphasized previously, this
event was made possible due to the very fruitful partnership that we’ve
developed with WIPO and JPO.
Allow me before I elaborate further
to specifically thank the Director General of WIPO, Dr. Francis Gurry, through
his representative, Mrs Joyce Banya for honouring his pledge to continuously
support ARIPO and its Member States in their quest to develop the IP system in
their respective territories. This is indeed the second time, this year that we
are organizing together a seminar on IP for the benefit of our Member States.
We are also grateful that WIPO has
mobilized resources by engaging the Government of Japan who generously
channeled them through the Funds-in-Trust mechanism that was established at
WIPO. We thank the Government of Japan, through you Mr Yuji Nakayama, for its
continued support to Africa.
Honourable Minister,
We are very much aware of the focus
of the Government in boostingthe administration of intellectual property rights
by providing the necessary resources to operationalise the system in Zanzibar
and we salute the professional manner the administration of intellectual
property rights is being handledin Zanzibar.
ARIPO would be happy to see more
and more engagement of Zanzibar in the activities and initiatives undertaken by
ARIPO for the benefit of its Member States especially in awareness raising,
capacity building, collective management of copyrights and innovation.
There is no doubt that Zanzibar has
a lot of potential in tourism, culture and agriculture that can be further
boosted by an adequate use of the intellectual property system. Therefore, ARIPO
remains available to provide any support that is possible for the development
of the IP system in Zanzibar and for it to benefit its people.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We at the ARIPO Secretariat are
striving to improve and provide better services to our users. ARIPO became one
of the few offices in Africa that provides e-filling system. The new
state-of-the-art system for filling applications and searching of technological
informationon-line, became operational last year. Today, 95% of payments of
ARIPO applications is done online; in general the uptake of the system by the
users is now at 53%for trademark applications and 67% for patents, utility
models and industrial design showing the tremendous success of the system among
the users. We hope that soon, all users will embrace the system.
The efforts in capacity building
are also bearing fruits: The Masters in Intellectual Property that ARIPO in
collaboration with WIPO and the Africa University, based in Mutare, Zimbabwe is
organizing since 2008 has graduated 247 students from 25 countries across
Africa, and __ of them are from Zanzibar. These IP experts are giving a
tremendous contribution to the development of the IP system in Africa by serving
as high level officials in the IP Offices, teaching in
institutions of Higher Learning and acting as patent agents and trademark
attorneys.
The ARIPO Secretariat is also
committed to improve its operations and gain more visibility. To that aim we’ve
unveiled the new logo which is protected under the WIPO administered article
6-ter of the Paris Convention and we are in our second year of implementation
of the five year “value and growth transformation” strategy which will guide
our activities in the period 2016-2020. We also undertook a series of internal
reforms with the adoption of a new organizational structureand placement of
staff in the same and realignment of our operations. ARIPO also celebrated on
December 9, 2016its 40thanniversary, which was an occasion to showcase our
successes and pledge for more to come in the future. The occasion was also an
opportunity to unveil our state-of-the-art building that hosts our offices.
Once again we thank the Honourable Minister for attending that event.
Honourable Guest of Honour,
Allow me before I conclude,to
underline the importance of this seminar and to urge all participants to contribute
actively in the discussions that will take place during this seminar, to make
it a successful and productive event.
I wish you fruitful deliberations
and successful outcome.
I thank you for your kind attention!
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