Current Projects

This project examines the evolving copyright landscape in Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, and Kenya, assessing how recent national reforms align with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) IP Protocol. It explores efforts to modernize copyright laws, protect local creators, and enhance economic and cultural benefits, while identifying persistent challenges such as limited enforcement, public awareness gaps, and institutional capacity constraints. By analyzing national reforms in the context of continental objectives, the study provides comparative insights and lessons to guide harmonized, future-oriented IP frameworks that support Africa’s socio-economic transformation, cultural preservation, and intra-African trade under Agenda 2063 and the AfCFTA.

We are contributing to the comparative research project titled State of IP Governance of Artificial Intelligence in Africa, by providing insight on Kenya’s legal and policy landscape at the intersection of IP and AI.

This report analyses Kenya’s evolving digital asset landscape, including cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and blockchain-based assets, through the lens of IP and data protection. It assesses how existing IP statutes intersect with blockchain technologies, examines privacy risks such as data immutability, and situates Kenya’s new Virtual Asset Service Providers Act (2025) within regional and global regulatory trends. The study calls for stronger alignment between technological innovation, IP protection, and privacy safeguards as digital assets grow in economic importance.

This study maps Kenya’s fast-growing streaming market and the piracy challenges that cost the creative sector an estimated KSh. 92 billion annually. It demonstrates how provisions of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Digital Trade Protocol’s articles on non-discrimination of digital products, digital infrastructure, cybersecurity, and consumer protection, can support stronger content protection and reduce infringement. The report offers recommendations to align Kenya’s copyright and digital trade frameworks with AfCFTA standards.

This policy brief recommends an African-driven approach to IP in AI governance, aligned with the AU Continental AI Strategy and AfCFTA IP Protocol. It highlights gaps in traditional IP concepts of authorship and ownership when applied to AI-generated outputs, limited access to quality datasets, and the need to safeguard Indigenous Knowledge. The brief proposes context-specific reforms, including AI-specific exceptions (e.g., TDM for research), strengthened benefit-sharing, and investments in local data ecosystems.

This project examines how Kenya can adapt its copyright framework to support responsible generative AI development by introducing clear text and data mining (TDM) exceptions for machine learning and AI training. It evaluates how global models—such as the EU’s DSM Directive, Japan’s broad computational-analysis exception, and Brazil’s proposed TDM provisions—balance innovation with rights protection, and assesses their relevance to Kenya’s legal, technological, and cultural context. The project aims to propose a Kenyan approach that enables lawful data access for AI researchers while safeguarding human rights, supporting public-benefit research, and ensuring community consent for the use of cultural data.

This project examines how Kenya’s intellectual property (IP) and related legal frameworks are responding to the rapid rise of synthetic media: AI-generated text, images, audio, video, deepfakes, and digital replicas, which pose new challenges for authorship, ownership, data use, and protection of identity. While synthetic media offers major opportunities for Africa’s creative economy, it disrupts traditional IP concepts and exposes gaps in areas such as non-human authorship, use of copyrighted or culturally sensitive training data, and misuse of likeness or voice. The study evaluates the adequacy of Kenya’s current IP, privacy, data protection, consumer protection, and personality-rights regimes in addressing these issues, compares emerging approaches in other African jurisdictions and the EU, and proposes policy and legal reforms needed to create a coherent, future-oriented framework for governing synthetic media in Kenya and the wider African context.

This project examines the underutilization of intellectual property (IP) as collateral for financing in Kenya, despite the existence of the Movable Property Security Rights Act (MPSRA). It explores challenges in IP valuation, including lack of standardized methodologies, limited expertise among financial institutions, low awareness among entrepreneurs, and legal and enforcement uncertainties. The study highlights the potential of IP-backed financing to stimulate innovation, enhance access to credit, promote economic growth, and strengthen Kenya’s competitiveness. Drawing on these insights, the project provides recommendations to improve IP valuation practices, increase awareness, and encourage the broader use of IP assets as collateral within Kenya’s financial ecosystem.

Our AI and IP Training Series has so far trained over 50 participants, including lawyers, ICT professionals, students, and academics. The first workshop introduced participants to the fundamentals of intellectual property in AI innovation, covering copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. The second session focused on policy-oriented topics, integrating global insights on generative AI and copyright. A dedicated module on AI and Indigenous Knowledge highlighted the importance of culturally sensitive AI governance in Africa. The upcoming 2026 sessions will provide further insights into the evolving intersection of AI and intellectual property.

This research focuses on analysing the integration of intellectual property (IP) into the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) strategies and policies across the African continent. The core purpose of this research project is to map existing regional and national AI strategies, including the African Union Continental AI Strategy and national strategies from countries such as Zambia, Ghana, and Kenya, to identify the provisions they include regarding IP. This critical examination is driven by the urgent need to address the underrepresentation of IP in these frameworks, which poses significant challenges for innovation governance and ethical AI development, particularly concerning complex issues such as clarifying ownership rights for AI-generated works and balancing data access with data protection. By highlighting these gaps and providing recommendations, the project seeks to encourage African policymakers to deliberately integrate IP into AI governance to catalyze investment, strengthen local innovation ecosystems, and ensure the continent builds a coherent and ethical AI landscape.

The research aims to critically analyse the gender disparities in AI data practices and data curation. It seeks to examine the effects of gender misrepresentation and underrepresentation on the fairness and inclusivity of AI systems and to explore the human rights challenges that arise from this exclusion. Ultimately, the project seeks to propose recommendations for implementing human rights-based and African-centered AI governance frameworks. This involves integrating gender-responsive data and labour practices and developing policies that acknowledge historical misrepresentations while focusing on empowering women as data creators, researchers, and beneficiaries.

Human rights have been at the center of considering a regulatory approach to AI. As such, this project aims to critically and analytically assess the place of advancing a human rights-based approach to building responsible and ethical AI governance structures in Africa. In consideration of the evolving AI regulatory landscape across the continent and the varied regulatory mechanisms already in place to establish a robust AI governance ecosystem, this research project will examine what it means to have ethical and responsible AI governance on the continent. Further, the research study will highlight the impact of AI on human rights, examining human dignity, equality, and justice, and further building a justification for universal rights principles, including equality, dignity, privacy, and cultural rights, as the basis for a robust governance ecosystem.