China's Ministry of Commerce Envisions Promising Cooperation in the IP Field with Africa
There are promising prospects of cooperation in economics between China and Africa, the trade volume of which has increased tenfold in the past ten years. In 2018, the total trade volume between China and Africa exceeded 200 billion USD. The upgraded cooperation provides great opportunities for development for the Chinese industries to enter the African market, which also encourages the local industrialization.
The average distance among major African cities (with population over 4 million) is 4,100 kilometers, the average flight duration of which reaches 12 hours. Besides, the lagging transportation network on land also impedes the economic development of Africa. “There lies a lot of opportunities in Africa while many start-up companies are puzzled with transportation problems with imports and exports on the continent. In recent years, several Chinese delivery companies & platforms have signed cooperation contracts with Africa. The logistics efficiency in Africa has been greatly raised by the diversified solutions like logistics and intelligent logistics zones which boost the efficiency of logistics and the development of industries, create potential growth for the transnational e-commerce business and logistics.” said Cheng Zhigang, secretary general of China-African Cooperation Association & Organization Committee of China-Africa Industrial Forum.
“At present, many African countries have realized the importance of intellectual property to boost domestic economic development. And they also start to consider how to raise their domestic IP protection capabilities and stress the importance of education to raise the innovation of the youth to raise awareness of IP protection of the society.” said Cheng. In his introduction, the IP protection is limited in the countries such as South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Tanzania, same as the rest of African countries. Such countries are in need of international regulations to handle the IP disputes. The enterprises and institutes of China who are willing can help upgrade the IP oversea layouts for local enterprises, build and improve the overseas IP rights protection system and establish a complementary and coordinative overseas IP assistance mechanism which consists of relevant government departments, embassies, overseas representative institutes, business associations, enterprises, arbitral agencies, mediation agencies and professional IP service agencies.
June 13, 2019
Source: Ministry of Commerce
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