This book gives the reader an understanding of the legal and practical issues posed by copyright for access to education and learning materials in Africa, and identifies the relevant lessons, best policies and best practices that would broaden and deepen this access.

The emergence of the Internet and the digital world has changed the way people access, produce and share information and knowledge. Yet people in Africa face challenges in accessing scholarly publications, journals and learning materials in general. At the heart of these challenges, and solutions to them, is copyright, the branch of intellectual property rights that covers written and related works.

Based on the work of the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) research network, a community of experts probing the relationship between copyright and learning materials access in eight African countries, the book explores on-the-ground realities in Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda.

C. Armstrong, J. de Beer, D. Kawooya, A. Prabhala, and T. Schonwetter

UCT Press, IDRC / 2010-01-01

ISBN: 978-1-91989-545-1 / 268 pg.
e-ISBN: 978-1-55250-490-

You can read the entire book as an HTML file, PDF download, or ePUB through IDRC’s open access digital library. Or you can download it from the ACA2K project’s website, or purchase it on websites like Amazon.com.

Notably, through the ACA2K website, you can access translations of many of the book’s research findings in Portuguese, Arabic, and French. The book has been translated into French by University of Laval Press, and can be downloaded as an open-access PDF file from IDRC. Read more about the French translation here on my website.