LYIP: Intellectual Property Seen Raising Ethiopia’s Revenues
Ethiopia: Intellectual Property Seen Raising Country's Revenues
The Daily Monitor (via All Africa)
Addis Ababa
June 09, 2008
A key report showing how African firms can retain profits said on Friday Ethiopia could set an example on how best to expolit intellectual property to raise export income and alleviate poverty.
The report found that effective intellectual property strategies can raise African producers' incomes by up to 320 percent, compared to traditional aid models, which can raise incomes by only about 1.6 percent a year.
Light Years IP studied 14 product sectors,and found that some sectors have the potential to increase export income from $1.1 billion per year to between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion per year.
Among the products researched were Ethiopian fine coffee Ethiopian leather, Kenyan tea, Sudanese cotton, and Malian mudcloth.
The report outlined a number of areas where African countries could receive more of the value from their products. For instance, Ethiopian coffee, it says, is recognised as being among the best in the world.
"Using the success of Ethiopian coffee growers, with own intellectual property on the world-famous Sidamo, Yirgacheffe and Harar brands, export incomes could improve dramatically and alleviate poverty," Ron Layton, chief executive officer of Light Years IP told a press conference, according to a news report.
Layton said in 2004 Sidamo was sold for $26 a pound in the United States, with Ethiopian producers getting about $1.30.
Today they receive $2.50 a pound, with $3 on the horizon,he said. "In sub-Saharan Africa, something quite new is happening with intellectual property," the report states, adding that intellectual property is increasingly being used in business strategies to boost the export incomes of large numbers of African producers.
The report notes the dramatic increase in the intangible value of products over recent decades, finding that this has now overtaken the physical value of products as the main source of corporate income.
Now, with the value of intangible assets at the top end of the value chain, intellectual property strategies are more important than ever.
The report argues that Africa could develop business strategies with IP (intellectual property) built-in when exporting to developed country markets where value is dominated by IP.At the moment, states the report, "valuable returns from IP are being captured in the importing country and not in the African country of origin".
Up to now, the authors argue, strategies for export development in Africa have relied too heavily on increasing the production of commodities and establishing new processing or manufacturing plants.
This has put African countries in "intense competition" with other developing countries that are also increasing production and manufacturing.
More than 800 participants from around 50 countries engaged with each other in the 18th World Economic Forum on Africa, which closed s on Friday.
