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Flying across the massive Sahara desert is a remarkable experience. After hours upon hours of dunes, mountains and more dunes, the sight of Dakar perched on the edge of the Atlantic was a welcomed one. A lengthy wait in the immigration queue and a bit of a struggle through the crowd of touts and taxis outside of the airport finally led to a ride into the city on a brand new road, apparently paid for by Iranians. I thought that was interesting, though I can’t really explain why. Dakar is a vibrant city, with lively markets, a super music scene and great food, all of which I enjoyed immensely.
From a legal perspective, Senegal is, of course, a former French colony that continues to be governed by the droit civil, though customary and Islamic laws are also relevant. That makes Senegal great for comparisons and contrasts with other ACA2K study countries.
Work in Senegal consisted mainly of meetings with the local research team and a trip to the Université Cheikh Anta Diop. Getting to the Université required some delay and a slight light rerouting on account of student demonstrations over missing scholarship money. That led to a few days of clashes with the police and tear gassings that I was glad to avoid. When I did see main library, it became apparent that the situation with access to learning materials in Senegal is not good.
As an experiment, we tried to locate learning materials related to the topic of droit d’auteur. That wasn’t easy because it required flipping through crowded drawers of yellowed index cards, not clicking through an electronic catalogue. (We learned that most of the terminals that are in the library aren’t connected on an intranet, let alone to the internet.) Upon finally finding the right section of the library and wading through a few shelves of disorganized legal materials, we came across about a half-dozen torn up and outdated books. This, we were told, was probably the norm for nearly any topic we’d be interested in.
It seems one of the biggest problems with books in Senegal (and elsewhere, we later learned) is vandalism. Glass cases in the library display books burned, ripped and—believe it or not—eaten by goats. Yes, seriously. So removing books from the building is no longer permitted. The whole collection is essentially on reserve. The unfortunate side effect of that policy, when combined with the severe shortage of books, is that students will simply tear the pages they’re interested in right out.
And here’s where copyright comes in. Signs next to all of the freestanding photocopiers ask students to photocopy rather that rip pages from books. But right next to those signs are warnings that photocopying constitutes copyright infringement and is therefore illegal. A vague reference to a narrow research exception is appended as if it were a footnote. Students are left confused by the contradiction.
The circumstances are so dire that in the law library the shelves only contain photocopies of entire books, while the originals must remain behind locked doors for safekeeping. Clearly a copyright infringement, but what choice is there? That, in a nutshell, sums up the Senegalese situation concerning copyright and access to learning materials.
Of course, there is much more we learned from engaging with the Senegalese team, as well as from visits to some of the many large-scale photocopying operations around campus and our meeting with the woefully underfunded and understandably forlorn law librarian. But I’ll save those details for one of the project’s later reports, coming next year. For now, I'll jot down some notes for a post on my visit to Ghana, which is where I went next.
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