The Challenges of Promoting Innovation through Technology Transfer into Africa

Abstract

Abstract This chapter establishes that to promote technology transfer and innovation to developing states requires the establishment of a uniform international legal framework. It provides details of the attempts to establish such a regime and these include: the Draft International Code of Conduct for the Transfer of Technology developed in 1976 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Multilateral Agreement on Access to Basic Science and Technology (ABST), partially embraced by the WIPO Development Agenda, and the attempt to compound an International Transfer of Technology Agreement (ITT). This chapter explains that with the failure to establish a uniform regime, separate and sectoral regimes of technology transfer mushroomed, especially in the environmental sector, leading to the fragmentation of the international legal framework on the matter. The chapter proposes, as a solution, to condense the positive aspects of the previous proposals into a single international legal instrument.