On November 20, 2018, a creative economy conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, put East Africa’s weak intellectual property systems under the spotlight. The meeting, held at the British Council and attended by participants from Kenya and Uganda, focused on how the region can turn IP into a practical source of financing for creators.
The Second Mashariki Creative Economy Impact Investment Conference, convened by Culture and Development East Africa (CDEA) with the Copyright Society of Tanzania, was held under the theme “Intellectual property as collateral for financing the creative economy in East Africa.” Delegates said the region needs laws that recognise intellectual property as collateral, stronger public awareness, better registration of IP, and tighter oversight of collective management organisations so royalties can be collected and distributed more effectively.
The discussion came against a backdrop of poor returns for creators across the continent. The 2018 CISAC Global Collections Report said royalty collections in Africa reached $85 million in 2017, mostly from music, but that figure still accounted for less than one per cent of total global collections reported to CISAC. The report also noted that South Africa, Morocco and Algeria made up the bulk of collections at 50.5 per cent, 7.2 per cent and 26 per cent respectively.
CISAC said the problem is not only low collections but also weak licensing. “Much work remains to be done. In 2017, the CISAC survey revealed that less than 40 per cent of all radio stations in Africa were licensed to broadcast music,” the report said. In East Africa, Uganda led the region in collections.
Uganda Performing Rights Society chief executive James Wasula said the society collected licence fees of Ush506 million ($133,238) in 2016 and Ush545 million ($143,507) in 2017. He also said Uganda paid out Ush92 million ($24,225) in 2016 and Ush61 million ($16,062) in 2017. Wasula told The EastAfrican: “Our expenditure, though modest, appears to be high due to low collections. If government agencies played their regulatory role effectively, collections would high and our administration costs relatively low,”
He added that litigation had pushed up costs and reduced distributions. “The decline in royalty distribution was due to the high cost of litigation. The Uganda Registration Services Bureau declined to renew Copyright Inspectors’ Certificates of Authority without assigning any reason. We had no option but to enforce our members’ rights through litigation,” Mr Wasula said. He also said that of more than 250 radio stations in Uganda, only 20 pay royalties, and added: “The problem is that radio stations do not want to sign licensing agreements with CMOs for purposes of collecting royalties.”
In Tanzania, the Copyright Society of Tanzania (Cosota) said Tsh237 million ($103,209) was collected in 2015 and Tsh57 million ($24,822) was distributed to rights owners. In Kenya, the Music Publishers Association of Kenya, which had been operating for less than a year and had only collected for two months because of court cases, raised Ksh1.8 million ($18,047) and distributed Ksh1.2 million ($12,633), according to operations manager Samuel Onyango.
The conference also heard that Africa remains far behind on intellectual property filings. The World Intellectual Property Organisation’s 2016 IP Statistics Report put Africa at only 0.6 per cent of all international intellectual property applications. The African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) Annual Report 2017 showed the largest share of applications came from the US at 33 per cent, followed by South Africa at eight per cent and Germany at six per cent. ARIPO member states accounted for 2 per cent of the overall patent applications lodged in 2017.
In East Africa, trademark data remained patchy. Kenya was the only country in the region with published figures, and the Kenya Industrial Property Institute said national trademark registrations fell from 2,111 marks in 2008 to 1,999 in 2009 before rising to 2,354 marks in 2010. No figures were available for 2015, 2016 or 2017. The Uganda Registration Services Bureau and Tanzania’s Business Registrations and Licensing Agency did not publish national trademark registration figures on their websites.
Samuel Sangwa, CISAC’s regional director for Africa, said outdated laws were part of the problem. In his paper, Copyright in Africa: Overview, challenges, achievements, he argued that rules written for an era of one public radio station and one TV station no longer fit the current media environment. “Today, there are several radio and television stations. So these laws have to be revised to reflect the changing times. Licencing in this digital era is the way to go,” he said.
Other speakers said the region also lacks the practical structures needed to make IP bankable. In his presentation, “IP and Industrialisation,” acting chief executive officer Emmanuel Kakwezi said many rights holders remain informal and lack the corporate structures financiers expect. He said there is also a shortage of policies and guidelines in financing institutions, weak auditing and valuation systems, and no widely accepted method for pricing intangible assets. “Intellectual property is not one of the queries by auditors while other assets are required to be evaluated. This is mainly caused by lack of universally acceptable evaluation methods of Intellectual property assets. Ascertainment of actual Intellectual property value has remained a problem because Intellectual property is intangible,” he said.
Kakwezi also said optional registration has weakened the standing of IP as an asset and warned of infringement risks where border controls and internal checks are weak. Tanzanian intellectual property lawyer Sunday Ndamugoba said the region does not adequately secure IP or assign it value for financing. “We do not secure Intellectual property in Tanzania and East Africa in general. We do not put a value on Intellectual property from the creative industry to ensure financial institutions fund those employed in the sector based on royalties due to them,” he said.
He called for IP hubs and research and development facilities, while another Tanzanian lawyer, Dr Saudin Mwakaje, questioned whether the sector has the structures, institutions and sales projections needed to attract investment. Robert Mwampembwa of the Tanzania Visual Arts Association said President John Magufuli had created a directorate for the arts, but it had not yet received a budget allocation. He said good policies and regulations were being undermined by poor implementation and the absence of strategic plans.
