[Book review] Protecting Geographical Indications in Africa

This Kat has spent her Easter break reading about her favourite topic: “Protecting Geographical Indications in Africa” by Marius Schneider and Nora Ho Tu Nam (Oxford University Press, 272 pp.). As its title suggests, this book is an obvious fit for lawyers, consultants and researchers who work with the issue of GIs in the African region. This Kat, however, would also recommend it to a broader audience of GI-interested readers, and this for several reasons.

First, this book covers 11 jurisdictions from Africa, as well as Africa’s two regional intellectual property (IP) organisations: African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) and African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO). While GI scholarship traditionally focuses on the ‘Old world vs New world’ divide, the African perspective on the issue is forgotten. This is undeserved: as Schneider and Ho Tu Nam remind their readers, it was because of competition with Algerian wines that France, cradle of the GI system, originally introduced its first appellation of origin laws. In the current days, leading GI cases in the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) featured products such as the South African Rooibos tea or the Ethiopian Sidamo Coffee.

Second, online resources on IP laws in Africa are often limited in their reach. In this sense, the book not only offers an exhaustive overview of the laws in place, but it also provides insights on the forthcoming changes in legislation. For this Kat, the most surprising reform mentioned in the book might be Kenya’s plans to introduce a GI court.

Third, the jurisdictions chosen by the authors represent a true variety of approaches to GI protection: sui generis GI laws (such as in Algeria, Egypt or Morocco), protection through collective and certification marks (found in Ethiopia or Nigeria), and the common law approach adopted by South Africa. While the European countries, too, used to address GI protection differently, this was abandoned with the introduction of the EU GI Regulations some 30 years ago. The African continent allows for an interesting comparative perspective on the effectiveness of each of the models.

Fourth, while the book as such does not focus on the technical assistance (TA) projects (that is, bilateral cooperation between governments on selected IP issues), it could surely serve as a starting point for a dedicated research concerning the impact of TA on the introduction of GI protection outside of the EU. Throughout the book, its authors constantly mention how this or that African GI was registered with support of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), EU, France, Italy, or even Japan. However, merely registering a GI is insufficient, Schneider and Ho Tu Nam suggest. In their view, TA projects could also finance GI enforcement, especially when African products need support in the European market.

Fifth, this book looks at the GI system objectively, recognising both its benefits and its unfulfilled promises. In this sense, this Kat has especially liked the concluding chapter, where the authors critically review the various aspects of setting-up a GI: public costs, impact on small producers, post-registration enforcement, etc.

Amidst all the achievements of the book, one thing that left this Kat a bit surprised is the choice of jurisdictions: from the corresponding chapters it seems that some of the countries have neither the laws nor potential GI products that would support their inclusion in the book. Nevertheless, the African Continental Free Trade Area’s decision to introduce a sui generis GI system in nearly all African states (with the exception of Eritrea) might give a new push to the GI topic in Africa (and warrant a second edition of Schneider and Ho Tu Nam’s book).