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AFRICA on the RISE
by WCDOA pubs
AAgricultural products from the Western Cape are special. Full stop; no room for argument. This is not me saying that –ask the European Union, which recently included “Rooibos”/“Red Bush” as the first African product in its register of Geographic Indications (GI) (Troskie, 2021). Other unique products include heuningbos, Karoo lamb, Karoo pomegranate, buchu, Cape flora, Boland waterblommetjies, Weskus snoek and more. Of course, there is also the whole range of unique wines linked to specific geographic areas.
But, are these GIs limited to the Western Cape or does it extend into Africa?
Over more than a decade the Western Cape Department of Agriculture has been participating in the process to create a framework for African GI (e.g., see Troskie, 2016) and in 2018 the African Union (AU) adopted a GI Strategy (AU, 2018).
More recently, I had the opportunity to support the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO), a collective of 21 (mainly) English-speaking African countries, in developing a guideline on GI. In the process a number of unique principles were agreed upon. For instance, ARIPO will globally be one of the first regions to actively provide GI protection for handicrafts and a conditional transitional process from trademark to GI will be allowed.
