Laws to protect community knowledge & innovations needed

LAWS TO PROTECT INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE, INNOVATIONS NEEDED

The Guardian / IPP Media | Dar es Salaam |15 March 2003

By Zephania Ubwani

A university don has called for the review of the legislation on intellectual property rights in Tanzania to make it protect indigenous knowledge and innovations of the local communities.

The review and harmonisation of the laws and regulations would not only help and guarantee the local communities to maintain their traditional knowledge and innovations but ensure they benefited from the control of such information.

Dr. Palamagamba J. Kabudi of the University of Dar es Salaam told a workshop on Indigenous Knowledge in the city on Wednesday that the intellectual property rights regime in Tanzania did not adequately protect the traditional knowledge of the local people and must be reviewed.

"A special legislation has to be enacted to better enable the local communities to protect and control their knowledge, innovations and practices such as plant varieties", he said.

It was unfortunate that the legislation on intellectual property rights in Tanzania was confined to protecting the rights of inventors, scientists, commercial breeders and biotechnology companies but weak on the protection of traditional knowledge.

"This is because traditional knowledge is usually considered not new and lacks novelty and its attendant components," explained Dr. Kabudi, a senior lecturer in Law at the University of Dar es Salaam.

He proposed the enactment of legislation on intellectual property rights requiring approval of and benefit -sharing with the local communities through appropriate government institutions.

"It is advisable that this legislation should include access to both knowledge and genetic resources which are taken away and patented ex-situ," he said.

Dr. Kabudi also called for the establishment of ethical guidelines and codes of conduct for the collection and dissemination as well as benefit-sharing for traditional knowledge, innovations and practices.

Prof. George Kajembe of the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) said indigenous knowledge, which has sustained the local people in Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa for generations, had until recently been seen as a hindrance to modernisation.

Lack of recognition, understanding and use of indigenous knowledge have led to environmental degradation and loss of the country's bio-diversity.

He warned on the implications of patents and other forms of intellectual property rights on living organisms such as plants for commercial purposes, saying they encouraged bio-piracy and theft of the country's resources.

"The types of rights Tanzania needs are not those intellectual property rights which monopolise for commercial purposes what belong to the communities but those rights that recognise and protect the lives and livelihood of the local communities," he said.