AT TACIP research costs 2

Timetable: 01.05.2025- 31.08.2027

Project status: Active

Funders: Suomen Akatemia

Project budget: 0€ - 50 000€

Project external partners: The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization, The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (Research host/partner); The Organization Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle, The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (

Summary: This research investigates the role of technical assistance in the constitutionalization of intellectual property norms in developing countries – with a specific focus on Africa. Increasingly, the regulation of intellectual property is taking centre stage as a driver of economic development in post-colonial Africa despite its potentially negative effects. This notwithstanding, there has yet to be any research that systematically and critically addresses the issue. Using the emerging discourse on intellectual property and new constitutionalism as a starting point, this research will seek to propose a new theory of technical assistance as an enabler of the constitutionalization of intellectual property norms in Africa. To achieve this, this research innovatively combines three theories (the new informality, political economy of intellectual property, and post-colonialism), three methods (doctrinal analysis, critical discourse analysis, and comparative analysis) and a dataset (interviews)....