 Good afternoon, everyone, and let me welcome you to the special session of our seminar series on the economics of intellectual property, which at the same time today is a side event to the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property. The topic of today's seminar is the informal economy in developing countries, hidden engine of innovation and source of intellectual property. The genesis of the work that is going to be presented today goes back to a development agenda recommendation, development agenda recommendation number 34 on the relationship between the informal economy and intellectual property. And we were confronted with this development agenda recommendation about four years ago, and at first we were a bit hesitant what to do with this. We were asked to prepare a research project based on that recommendation. And the reason we were hesitant, I suppose it's the traditional hesitancy that economists have to do work where there's relatively little data. And that's a classical problem in the area of research on the informal economy. There clearly is lots of anecdotal evidence, there's convincing evidence that innovation occurs in the informal economy, but it is quite difficult to measure that. Nonetheless, we did our best to respond to that, and I think my colleague, Sascha Wunsch-Winzent, developed a really interesting project out of this recommendation. And the project had several objectives. One objective was essentially to clarify how we should think about how intellectual property may be relevant to the informal economy. The second objective is to develop a framework that allows us to study these linkages. And finally, the third objective is to sort of test that framework, to apply that framework in the number of countries, and to provide case studies evidence. Today's seminar brings together most of the researchers who were involved in this project. It seeks to summarize the main insights that was gained through the project's various studies and offer some thoughts on possible future analytical work in this area. This just leaves me to introduce the various speakers that we have today. Let me start with my colleague, Sascha Wunsch-Winzent, who has been Wipo's project manager for this project. He is a senior economist in the economics section of the Economics and Statistics Division. He came to WIPO more than three years ago, and he previously worked for the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, to be correct. Next to him is Professor Jacques Charme, who is an economist and statistician. He's Emeritus Research Director at the French Scientific Research Institute for Development, and he essentially has spent his career researching the design and analysis of the, well, he has developed many surveys on how to measure the informal sector, mainly in Africa, and he has written many articles and published many papers on this topic. Then we have Erika Kremer-Nboula, who's sitting in the first row here. At some point, we're going to change seats. She's a senior lecturer and research fellow at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at Swann University of Technology in South Africa, and her research interest is on the relationships between science, technology, and innovation, sustainable developments, and the various routes to the expansion of creative competencies in Africa, and she's interested in both the informal sector and the formal sector. Then we have George Esegebi, who's the Director of the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Ghana. He holds a PhD in Development Studies and he has conducted a number of studies on science, technology, and innovation and development, and he has done a lot of work looking at micro and small enterprises, and he has also studied the role of intellectual property in this regard. Then finally, we have Jeremy DeBeer, who is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. He has worked on technological innovation, intellectual property, and international trade and development. He has published in many peer-reviewed journals cross-cutting interdisciplinary approaches, and I think he's well known to many of us who work in the area of IP and development. So with this introduction, let me turn to my colleague, Sascha Wunsch-Vincent, who is going to give, I think, a proper introduction into the project, and also together with Shaq Shahan is going to present the conceptual approach taken as part of this project. Yes, thank you, Carsten. So I have the pleasure to introduce this project and its initial mind findings, and I must really echo what Carsten has said a minute ago. This was one of these projects that we walked into hesitantly, and the more we uncovered that innovation is taking place to such extent in the informal economy, and the fact that the innovation literature or economists weren't actually looking at that strand of the informal economy, and actually IP and informal economy experts weren't on the academic level and also on the practical level not communicating to one another. This is really where we discovered the merit of this project as we went along, essentially. So the starting point, obviously, of this project is the notion that the informal economy is ubiquitous in most developing countries, and Jacques will talk about this in a minute. There's also another starting point, and that is that quite a lot of creativity and innovation is taking place in that sector. And given the large contribution that the sector makes to employment and growth in developing countries, one ought to analyze this behavior in a more detailed fashion. So three core questions were pursued by this project. One was very simply, how is innovation actually occurring in the informal economy? We did not want to start from the idea, how could the informal economy use IP? And let's make it easier for them. Now the first step was to assess how informal economy innovation is really taking place. In comparison and with innovation frameworks in mind that we know from more developed country settings. Second question was, how do these innovation actors actually reap the fruits of innovation? Even in the most advanced economies and the most advanced sectors, IP is often only one out of many appropriation forms. And so we wanted to assess in more detail what is actually happening on that front on the informal economy level. And third, given that most innovation policy approaches today, including in countries with large informal economies, don't cater to innovation in the informal economy. The last question was really, do existing policy frameworks need adaptation in the light of our findings? Now in that sense, there is some sort of an opening of a new facet of innovation through these studies. And we hope also, although of course, this is only starting the work. We hope that it's a starting point for future comprehensive cross-country studies that will apply that methodology to other sectors and in other countries. Secondly, we believe that it makes a significant contribution to the measurement agenda. Most of the measurement agenda concerning innovation statistics is largely determined in developed countries. Notably, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics is developing R&D surveys, the OECD, etc. But none of those is really tailored for surveying informal economy activities. So we hope that this is a starting point. And finally on the policy side, as I just mentioned, we also hope to have some influence on that end. Let me pass to Jacques for telling us what the informal economy actually is and how important it is in these developing countries. Thank you, Sacha. So it is important to remind you with key points on the definitions and global figures on the informal economy. Because usually each study comes with its own definition so that at the end of the day we cannot put the findings within the global picture. So as you know, the informal sector was invented and born at the two extremes of the African continent, in Ghana and in Kenya. And those two countries are part of the present studies. And since then, many tentative definitions have been given of the phenomenon. But thanks to the ILO, statistical definitions were coined by the 15th International Conference of Labor Statistics in 1993 for the informal sector. And in 2003 for another definition, complementary, informal employment. And so in this study, the informal economy is comprised of both the informal sector and informal employment outside the informal sector. So the informal sector is defined by the 15th ICLS in 1993 as an establishment or enterprise-based definition. It is comprised of all unincorporated economic units not registered and or not registering their employees and or under a size threshold of five permanent paid employees. And in 2003, the 17th ICLS defined informal employment as an individual job-based definition. And the operational definition is all occupied person not affiliated to social security or without written contract. Now, using those definitions, we know that at the end of the 2010s, employment in the informal economy accounted for an average of 70% of non-agricultural employment in sub-Saharan Africa and nearly the same percentage in Asia, southern and southeastern Asia. 53% in Northern Africa, Middle East, Northern Africa, and 57% in Latin America. The informal employment has an important social dimension for many people and especially the poor. It is the only means for earning a living, but also there is an upper tier in the informal sector which is comprised of dynamic micro-enterprises open to innovation. And so it is important for this project to understand that within those global figures, the informal sector, that is the micro-enterprises, whatever their size, represent between 50 and 80% of the total informal economy. So in this project on innovation and intellectual property, we are dealing with 50 to 80% of global employment in the informal economy. Now, the contribution of informal sector to GDP, according to the national accounts of the various countries, if we include agriculture in the informal sector, then we can see that the informal sector represented more than 60% of the total GDP in sub-Saharan Africa, more than 50% in India, and up to more than 30% in Middle East, North Africa, a little bit less than 30% in Latin America, and a little bit less than 20% in transition countries. Now, the usual indicator that is used for measuring the informal sector is excluding agriculture. So in terms of non-agriculture or informal sector, you see that it represented more than 50% exactly in sub-Saharan Africa without agriculture, 45% in India, and around 30% in Middle East, North Africa, and 25% in Latin America. So those figures give you an idea of the size and contribution of the informal sector and the informal economy to total employment, non-agricultural employment, and total and non-agricultural GDP. Thank you. Thank you, Jacques. So as exemplified by Jacques' presentation, this is quite a tremendous chunk of developing countries' economy. The question then really was, what innovation is taking place within that sector? This question is not easy to answer, as Carsten said. You know, uncovering innovation in developed countries is hard enough, but at least you have things like R&D spending, sometimes in the best of all worlds, you know, innovation surveys which are sent to developed country enterprises, and including increasingly also developing country enterprises. But obviously, you know, surveying what innovation takes place in this context is more difficult. Hence, the country studies that my colleagues will talk about in a minute. But let me summarize, broadly speaking, the findings of our studies. Now, first of all, the overarching finding that indeed innovation is taking place, we call it constrained-based innovations, often under conditions of scarcity and constraints. Obviously, you know, this sort of innovation is not driven by research and development in the formal sense, but often by adapting and applying existing knowledge and improving. And the important thing here is the idea of solving problems, and sometimes even overcoming the lack of solutions from the formal sector is really the driver of innovation in the informal sector. So it's sometimes, as one colleague calls it, it's tinkering around, right? I mean, trying to meet the demand, the large demand of certain, sometimes poor, strands of society with solutions to day-to-day problems. We also find convincing evidence for the fact that this innovation is usually operating in clusters. Now, this is not unique to the informal economy, right? Clusters also exist in developed countries in the formal sector. However, the intensity and, you know, the concentration and the size of these clusters was quite impressive in the context of the informal economy. Usually the innovation that was taking place, and this varies greatly across sectors, but was really with a low capital intensity and great limitations to technological upgrading and also limited skills. As mentioned previously, this innovation is not taking place in a vacuum, but it often really responds to supply and demand conditions. Much more so maybe you might think then innovation in the formal sector. So certain customers might bring certain problems to an informal manufacturer, and that manufacturer then will on the spot come up with a solution to that problem. Certain supply constraints of the formal sector might be overcome by solutions supplied by the informal sector. Now on skills, what we did find is that there is a, you know, like in the formal sector, there's varied sources of these skills, and I mean definitely there's a large range from unskilled to relatively sophisticated skills present in the informal economy that often can be, has been acquired in the formal sector actually by learning, by training, and often by apprenticeships, you know, classical apprenticeships that maybe Jacques later will talk about a little bit. One essential point also which is very relevant to intellectual property is the idea that information, you know, and knowledge diffused extremely rapidly in these informal economy clusters. With pros and cons, obviously, the advantage of course being that imitation could be large with a potential downward pressure on pricing and, you know, maybe greater access, but then again the problem of copying actually sometimes hurting the original, if you like, inventor of that innovation. One author, actually the author of the Kenyan study, he interviewed one person, and that one person in Kenya actually said, and I think he was producing pans and stoves and these sort of things, he said something like, he has three weeks, you know, three weeks to appropriate the benefits, if you like, from his invention. It's not long, right? Three years would be better, but so three weeks more or less until he actually sees, you know, the imitations actually. It was very funny also when listening to those inventors and what has been related to us is that the actual inventors had mixed feelings towards that, right? To some extent they, I believe, felt that it was natural, you know, that their contribution to innovation would diffuse rather naturally like that, and certainly hadn't often thought about, you know, more formally appropriating it, so that was, you know, that was an interesting finding. We identified a number of barriers to innovation, which I'll skip here in the interest of time, to move to, you know, the mechanisms that we found are used in the informal economy to appropriate innovation. Now, as we said at the outset, even the most sophisticated firms in the Silicon Valley use secrecy, for example, or, you know, lead time as one way of appropriating innovation. So this is no different, you know, in the informal economy context. We applied, you know, asked pretty much the question which of four or five different appropriation techniques were mostly in use. And the first finding is that less attention was really paid to even appropriating in the first place, like I said. And second, and this might not be a surprise to you, obviously the reliance on very formal, you know, IP-based mechanisms to appropriate was rather the minority, right? Some had thought about it and found the obstacles too great to overcome, but often it was more semi-formal or informal ways that helped them appropriate. Certain forms of branding were in place, you know, reputation mechanisms, although they don't really use trademarks in the formal sense, were in a similar extent in the informal economy than maybe in the formal setting. Secrecy, obviously, was a very big and important system. And then maybe a few appropriation mechanisms were actually different from the formal sector. So we identified a few codes, you know, of transmitting knowledge, certain tacit knowledge system, in particular in indigenous knowledge systems, which were actually forms of appropriating knowledge which we hadn't really been aware of in the formal sector. So it was an interesting innovation actually in appropriation in the informal sector as well. Now, we'll talk about policy, I think, in the last panel. But to foreshadow a little bit, a lot of work remains in this field. When we looked at the policy frameworks on the informal economy in developing countries, when we started this project, pretty much the dominant view was still that the informal economy needs to be suppressed and largely converted into the formal economy as soon as possible, right? This is still, to the great majority, the dominant thinking in this field. And certainly in the same countries, when you look at the innovation policies in place in those countries, rarely was there any mention of the informal economy at all. And so we hope that, you know, some of the results, the initial results of this project might be able to shift that policy attention in that direction. And I hope we have a chance to discuss with you and the experts which different policy strands we could develop. We developed some sort of a policy framework which would be great to discuss here and also then implement in developing countries. Thank you for your attention. Thanks to Jacques and a good transition to the country studies. So then we would move on to the country studies. And I believe we start with South Africa. So Erika, there will be you. Thank you, chair, for giving me time to present this. I'll try to be brief. I'm aware that we have more time, but we could speak about this for a long time. We have, as I mentioned, we have collected a lot of information, a lot of data. But I'll try to synthesize as much as possible. I probably don't have to go through the objectives of the study again, but just very quickly insist on the fact that we didn't look only at the informal manufacturers themselves, but we adopted a systemic approach by which we try to understand the system of actors and institutions that surround these informal manufacturing activities. So we tried to understand to get a good look at the innovation activities, but not only at the innovations themselves, but also at what happens for those innovations to emerge and to take place. How do informal actors learn, exchange knowledge, and adopt technologies, and which obstacles do they usually find in terms of materializing the innovations? And we also obviously looked at the mechanisms of knowledge appropriation and the policy implications, as was presented in the previous presentation. So just as a reminder, we look at what we call the home and personal care products. It's a very diverse sector, and it falls within the IC codes 2424s, the manufacture of soap, detergents, cleaning, and polishing preparations, perfumes, and toilet preparations. It's a very, very broad sector with very diverse business models, activities, and markets. We did a structure interviews to a sample of 25 informal manufacturers. There's no data on informal manufacturers. There's no database in South Africa. So we had to use a snowball sampling. We started off with the assistance of some technology transfer organizations that connect in the activities with some informal manufacturers. And through referral from one to another, we managed to identify the sample of informal manufacturers. It is a fact that as we moved into the research, we realized the extent and the size of this sector, and how fast the sector is growing, the informal manufacturing of home and personal care products in South Africa. We cover a range of geographical areas, three large informal settlements, and two main metropolitan areas in two provinces in South Africa, Houghton and the Eastern Cape. As you'll see in the next slides, we identified not only the productive value chain around the informal manufacturers, but also the wider innovation system. And we did that through interviews with suppliers, customers, government and regulatory bodies, training organizations, technology transfer, incubators, and also the local IP office. Just a few words on the profile of the home and personal care industry. Why is it important? It's important because it includes, as I said, a wide range of products. It's a broad and very fragmented market. It's dominated as most industries in South Africa by a few large companies. But there's plenty of room and space for small and micro manufacturers that are targeting very specific niche markets. For example, those addressing the needs of specific ethnic groups or wanting to incorporate more natural products in their formulations. There's also a very fast growing demand for low-cost products and small unit sizes. And this is a segment of the demand that is usually overlooked, but extremely large in South Africa. Home and personal care products are usually vital in the lives of people that have already covered their basic needs. And the low-income households spend approximately about 4% on household and personal care products. Just to give you a face to how some of these products look like, we see on the left some perfume manufacturers on the right some cosmetic products, cleaning products, and so on. As I mentioned, the concept of value chain allows us to understand the different types of activities that take place for a product to be produced through the various stages until it gets to the final customer. So trying to understand the productive change of informal manufacturers allowed us to really try and see, to try and understand the connections that take place between informal and formal activities at all these stages of the production. So as you can see, I won't go into that, but really trying to understand the connections that take... On the left, the pink shaded activities illustrate formal sort of manufacturing activities, and on the green we have the informal ones. And by identifying different business models and how formal suppliers connect to informal manufacturers and distributors, really allowed us to get a good understanding of the different business models, the different needs, the different activities that take place, and how that productive change really looks like in practice. As I said, we didn't only look if you see that sort of circle down there that illustrates the productive change that I just described, but we didn't stop there. We also tried to map and understand the interactions that happened with the broader innovation system. This includes education organizations, as I mentioned, knowledge and technology transfer representative organizations, and then formal regulations and rules that are set up by different governmental departments and global and international trend standards and technologies. And then we also have the cultural, socioeconomic, and historical context in the community. We tried to, the green arrows again, tried to point out some of these interactions that make sense and apply and are taking place regarding informal manufacturers, and the red ones are those that are perhaps more predominantly taking place with formal manufacturers. As I said, this is an illustration, but we actually looked at the quality of some of these interactions, and we got quite good information about the extent to which different actors in the innovation system play a stronger or lesser role in influencing the innovation activities emerging from informal manufacturers. Just to give you an indication of the level of interaction that takes place, in our interviews we asked about the amount of interaction that takes place, also about the quality of interactions, but in terms of the amount, you can see that about nearly half of the companies that informal manufacturers that we interviewed had some type of interaction with formal organizations. This includes mainly with technology transfer organizations, also with business incubators, representative organizations, and so on. Now, these interactions and exchanges that take place with the wider innovation system materialize very often in innovations, as I mentioned in the earlier presentation, they were not new to the world, but they were new to the firm and sometimes to the context in which they operated. You can see about 32% of the companies interviewed reported to have made significant improvements to the formulations. These manifested through in different ways. It could be adding healing properties to some of the products and so on. I won't go into details, 16% introduce some packaging and branding improvements, significant improvement, which is part of the OECD standard definition of innovation. And also innovation in processes, although innovation in products were more frequent. Some of them were technological, as I said, some of them were aesthetic. I won't go into that. Some highlights and innovation activities, sources of knowledge in the earlier presentation, Sasha mentioned that they are also some of the skills that are used in formal activities leading to innovation come from formal training and education. And in our case, one third of the respondents had some tertiary education. This gives you a little bit of an indication of the mismatch that exists between the skills that are produced in the formal sort of economy and how they're used informally and which kind of jobs, the formal jobs that the country's producing is. I mean, you can get quite a few policy implications coming out of that, but we won't go into that. Also, knowledge was obtained through formal training with technology transfer organizations, but there were also informal sources, obviously apprenticeships and learning by interacting, learning by doing was also a very common way of acquiring knowledge. Without going into detail, as I mentioned, innovation was usually incremental, reactive to the customer needs. And although we also found, sorry, this is two words, it's proactive and then it should be collaborative. We found examples of collaborative innovations and very often it was based on sharing resources and collaboration amongst the manufacturers. To give you some idea about what were reported as being the most frequent obstacles they found in terms of coming up with innovations. Insufficient education and knowledge, access to knowledge was one of the largest obstacles to innovation as reported by the interviewers. But also lack of machinery and equipment, inadequate premises, access to finance, some of those are shared by formal and informal micro enterprises. And as I think it was mentioned in one of the earlier presentations, this also gave us an indication that informality and formality is a continuum. You find different degrees of formality and informality across a continuum. And therefore some of the obstacles and advantages that we find in informal micro enterprises, we also would find them in formal micro enterprises. So in some cases it has got to do with the size rather than the business participation itself. In terms of the types of IP and mechanisms of knowledge appropriation that were used, it was mostly semi-formal and informal mechanisms of knowledge appropriation, secrecy, effective sharing of information, the division of duties and customer relationship management, were widely used. I think I have a table here, yes. So you can see the figures. Nearly half of the companies interviewed used secrecy as the main appropriation mechanism. But even 72% used effective sharing of information, not sharing certain types of information with their coworkers, was also a way of managing innovation. Division of duties was also very frequent and customer relationship management. You can see on top of the table formal mechanisms of appropriation were much less common. Although something interesting as well is that you'll see there on point three, 76% of the respondents didn't consider that they owned the ideas they used. And that gives you a very interesting hint about the importance of interactions and informal institutions and how knowledge is exchanged and appropriated. Just to give you an example of one specific case, there was a person that had learned everything. She was going through hardship and she learned everything from somebody else in the community. This person passes on the knowledge and then she carries on finding out additional knowledge to expand the range of products that she could offer. When I asked her, do you own the ideas that you, for these new, she was coming up with very interesting products, new hair masks and a whole range of cosmetics that she was doing, she was doing pretty well. She didn't consider that she owned any of the ideas. She said it was given to me, I don't own this, I'm just recombining this knowledge into something new. Although the recombination of knowledge and coming up with new products, it is an innovation and it's possible to appropriate that knowledge, but it's an understanding of how knowledge is exchanged and what you have to give back to the community that gave that knowledge to you. So that is an important element of understanding knowledge appropriation in the context of the informal economy and also in the context in which these informal manufacturers live and operate. Because it's not only productive activities, it's also the livelihood that supports them, including their neighbors and the community around them. But again, despite not considering that they own the ideas they use, there was an expressed interest by many in making use of formal mechanisms of knowledge appropriation. And I won't go into that, but the type of product in which the manufacturer engaged and the type of market that the manufacturer targeted had some correlation with the perception and the interest in using mechanisms of knowledge appropriation. 80% of the interviews reported to have their own brand and they identify the product with a name or a logo often displayed on the product. Just to find, this is the final slide, some policy implications. Policy matters. It's interesting because in many instances there's this idea that the informal and the formal take place in isolation and the informal economic activities are sort of out of any policy framework or not affected by any regulation. But policies and government programs do have an influence on informal economy actors. And the regulatory framework does shape the broader reality in which these informal entrepreneurs operate. Setting up standards, in many cases, does become a driver for innovation. As one informal entrepreneur perhaps wants to expand the business or target a broader market. So it does affect informal manufacturers. Policy frameworks, although have to be mindful of informal institutions, these cultural norms that guide behavior and rules of engagement. I haven't mentioned this, I haven't had time to get into this, but it's intermediary organizations are very important as well in building those connections, those arrows that I showed in the earlier graph across the innovation system, such as technology transfer organization, business incubators, training organizations, they usually play a very important role in bridging informal manufacturers with the broader system. And those bridges are critical and vital for upgrading and innovation. IP policy alternatives must then embrace the diversity of needs in the informal economy. Given the diversity of sectors, the diversity of business models and the diversity of products and activities, we can no longer understand the informal economy as this homogeneous block. It is as diverse as the formal economy, if not more. And therefore policy alternatives must embrace this diversity. And it must be done with a scenario, cost-benefit analysis done on the basis of data. And this is the reason why we are so excited and so committed to the results of this study as we see that data is very much lacking and on demand in government departments, but also in the academic world and for practical and intellectual use. I think that is it, thank you. Thank you, Erika, for this fascinating case study of informal manufacture of home and personal care products in South Africa. Let us move on to Ghana and invite George to present the study on herbal medicines in the informal sector. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming. Yes, indeed, in Ghana, we chose to study traditional Hebaum medicine. And as I said in my earlier presentation, it is mainly because if you are looking at the informal sector and if we are asking what kind of entrepreneurial activity can best be situated in the informal sector study, we believe that it's a traditional Hebaum medicine. And it's also because, when, next slide, if we talk about traditional Hebaum medicine, it is important to one of the key development areas in our country, which is healthcare delivery. So we went into the studies with these four main questions. Of course, there are related questions, but we asked ourselves who are the critical actors in the national innovation system of the traditional Hebaum medicine. And in asking this, it's in connection with the harmonized approach we have adopted for a study innovation in the informal sector across the three countries. We are asking ourselves, what are the drivers and inhibitors of innovation? In other words, we are studying innovations and we are interested in knowing what propels innovation and what inhibits it. Then, of course, we are interested in the intellectual property issues in the innovations that we come across. And specifically, we try to find out what intellectual property system is then traditional medicine. And of course, in all this, ultimately, we have to answer the question of what policies and programs can drive innovation in traditional medicine and what connections do they have for intellectual property? I like to emphasize that in what we did, we went as far down as possible. And so that picture is to depict the fact that we did cover the ground to the very lowest extent. And so you see in the picture, traditional Hebaum medicine apprentices. Later on, you see the boss himself in his heart practicing traditional medicine. But then we didn't restrict ourselves to this. We went also into the other sectors. We interviewed, in fact, it's not 100, 107 traditional medical practitioners. We interviewed regulators. And by regulators, we are talking about those officials in Ghana's Food and Drugs Authority, Ghana Standards Board, those who have the responsibility to ensure that products that are put on the market of setting standards, setting quality, and it meets the requirements of the law. We talked to doctors, we talked to policy makers, but the point of the bullet two is to highlight the fact that primarily, our focus was on traditional medical practitioners. And I'll be talking later about the associations and all that. Ghana's Health Challenges. One of the key challenges and which connects very well with traditional Hebaum medicine is the inadequate access that we have. And that picture is to show the typical very remote community. It's a settler farm. The picture was taken in the northern part of the country which is one of the most marginalized areas in our country. But in these communities, you still have traditional medical practitioners. And that underscores the importance of it. If you go on to take the statistics, doctor, patient ratio, one doctor to 10,380, and that's the national average. But then in some remote parts of the countries we are talking about, one doctor to about 33,000 patients. These kinds of statistics go a long way to underscore the importance of traditional medicine, the fact that we really do need policies and programs that would make the best use of it. Yeah, this is just to highlight some of the key challenges. I think we can go on. And from these slides, I just want to move on to some of the key findings. And here I would like to, but before I go on, I just want to also illustrate the kinds of traditional medical practitioners that we are talking about. So I mentioned the fact that we have the, the basic traditional medical practitioner as we know it's practicing in the village. And then also the one who is upgraded himself a bit and also the most sophisticated. Sorry, I'll do the next slide. Yeah, here I thought that I should explain a bit about the kinds of 107 traditional medical practitioners that we spoke to. Group one and two, you notice practitioners who employ from between one and 10 in total. And this is important because in Ghana, we have the national but for small scale industries defining what the micro enterprises, what the small enterprises and what the medium enterprises is and of course the large. For the micro, we talk about between one and five employees. And so you notice that the sample we have there over 68% fall in the micro category. And then for group two, which qualifies for small, we have 13%. And so altogether we are talking about over 80% right down there. And all of these go down to or move right in the informal sector. And that's important. So now if you are talking about findings, actors and drivers, I like to emphasize the fact that the traditional medical practitioners themselves constitutes key actors that are driving the innovations that we are seeing in traditional medicine in Ghana. And it's not just the individual traditional medical practitioners but also the clusters or associations that they've created from themselves. Clusters or the associations are geographically based but also in terms of their specialization and that. Then we can talk also about the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Health as far back as the year 2000 was able to get the Ghana Traditional Medical Practice Act passed. And the importance of that act is that it gives recognition to traditional medical practice but beyond that it mandates the Ministry to put the institutional framework in place for the proper recognition of the practice. And so you go to Ghana and you go to the Ministry of Health, they have what you call traditional and alternative medicine directorates, TAMD. And that directorate has been set up mainly to address the needs and concerns of traditional medical practice. There is also the Ghana Traditional Medical Practice Council that by law is required to register all traditional medical practitioners. I must say that that law is a bit of a challenge for the council itself because how do you go into the remotest villages and register these traditional medical practitioners? But nonetheless, these are some of the efforts that have come up in national policy and programs that have enabled us to see the kinds of innovations that we have observed in the traditional medicine sector. If you are talking about the drivers of innovation, I like to emphasize these three key things. We have the policies that have driven innovation in the sector, we have the regulations. If you take, for example, the regulation that we need to have all food and drug products subjected to approval by the food and drug authority which has been set up. Then you find that the traditional medical practitioners have to make every effort. They have to employ every method to be able to register their products. And so it calls for any innovation in that sense. Can we go back? Yeah, no. Yeah, move on. Yeah, okay. And then the third point I also made about drivers of innovation is a competition that is there. We have competitions not just amongst the traditional medical practitioners, but competition also from herbal medicine products that are coming into the country. We are having them from China, of course, definitely from China. And then we are having from India, we are having from Brazil all over the place. And so that creates its own competitive pre-precious on what the traditional medical practitioner of Ghana has to do to be able to hold onto a segment of the market. And that is why they resort to these kinds of innovations in terms of the process, they have to use equipment like this. Definitely it's not every traditional medical practitioner that can afford to, for example, get a stainless boiler installed or encapsulating machinery or bottling plants installed to make its products. But they are able to assess the facilities that have been installed elsewhere if they really want to. Some of them, of course, just parcel it the way traditionally they have been doing it, wrapping it up in polythene or rolling it into balls and then putting it out in the market. But what the study finds fascinating is a fact that you are having traditional medical practitioners who are also thinking more of the sophisticated market and therefore they resort to this. And so up there you see the final traditional medical products very well labeled and packaged. And in fact, you go into certain pharmacies and chemical shops in the cities and you find that they have shelves that stock this. And I thought it's a very interesting thing. Well, with intellectual property, the main thing has to do with secrecy that traditional medical practitioners use in their operations. But we find that trademarks don't only have the potential but also some of them are getting to trademarks to begin with they are required to register their enterprises so they do that and you find that they are able to come up with their own logos and they get registered and this placed on their products. The kind of products you see up there, you notice that it's all labeled the same kind of logos and these are registered products that you find. Then, so I like to emphasize that IP can facilitate innovation and create market opportunities and we observe this in our study. But then the key thing about the modern intellectual property system is simply that it has to be done if we really want to reach out to the majority of traditional medical practitioners, then we have to do something about how it is configured at present and this is something that we need to delve more into. And so if I may conclude, I would like to first and foremost make the point that policy initiatives are important in positively impacting on traditional medicine and we need to, it is good that Ghana has come a long way in this policy formulation. In fact, as I speak to you, there's a committee that's been set up in the Ministry of Health that is doing a reviewing. It's undertaking a review of the existing system for traditional medicine and trying to find out what more can be done. Policy is important to drive innovations and also to upscale what we are seeing. Innovations have also contributed to the competitiveness of the Ghanaian traditional products that we have seen on the market and it is possible that it can even go beyond the borders of Ghana. But in all this, I think that the challenge remains how we are able to create space for the informal practitioner to gainfully operate. You come to Ghana, the talk is about how to formalize the informal sector. So there is that concept of thinking that it is only in the formal sector that we can make the best returns for the country. But no, definitely in the informal sector, there is value in what we are doing. If you talk about healthcare delivery, I've already made a point that for the fact that the traditional medical practitioner is everywhere, is able to deliver healthcare services. And so we need to be able to accommodate the concept of informal economy even as we try as much as possible to build our modern economies. Thank you very much. Thank you, George. I suggest unless they're pressing questions that relieve all questions till the end of the seminar. If that's not the case, let's move on to the final panel. Where I would first invite Jeremy DeBear to distill the findings of the overall project and then invite my colleague, Herman Nacho, to reflect, sorry about that, Herman, to reflect on that. And by the way, I completely failed to introduce you. Herman is the Senior Director in the Department for Africa and Special Projects in Wipo's Development Sector and we invited him to reflect on the overall findings of this project and also maybe present some views on how this work could be extended. And then I will turn over to my colleague, Sacha Wunsch-Wincent, for some final observations. But Jeremy, why don't you present the main findings as you see them from the various components of this project? Thank you very much. I have to say it was a real privilege to be involved in this project. I was one of the members of the expert advisory group that the program or the project evaluator spoke about toward the end of our CDIP meeting. And I was privileged to actually have my foot in two projects, this project and a parallel project called the Open African Innovation Research Project. And one of my colleagues from that project, Dr. Dick Kouya, our Ugandan colleague, is here today. And what's fascinating about being able to work on both of those projects was the ability to draw comparisons across studies that were highly complementary. So there are of course these three case studies, two of which we've heard about and one, Kenyan metal manufacturing that we haven't yet heard about today but which I'll mention a little bit about. And through our open air project, we conducted studies in 14 different countries and at least five of them are relevant to the informal sector. But what's interesting is that those authors don't talk about the informal economy because to them it's just the economy and really the only one that matters. So it was a real privilege to be able to talk about or to be able to learn from both of those. So my job is to sort of draw together some insights and a particular insights on the role of intellectual property in this setting. My colleagues have already spoken about how it's clear from these studies that innovation happens in the informal economy but for the large part until now it's invisible or at least it's invisible to us in part because we've been using the wrong metrics or looking in the wrong places. So having these studies informed the measurement agenda is incredibly valuable. Now, although the formal intellectual property metrics like patents registered or trademarks, cross-border trademarks, don't necessarily apply in the informal economy. It doesn't mean that intellectual property is not important. The nuance is that we've got to look beyond the orthodox formal intellectual property outputs and start to understand intellectual property more holistically and more broadly. And when economists as opposed to lawyers talk about intellectual property, you often see the term appropriation. Appropriation strategies can include more than just formal intellectual property rights. And I think that's a very helpful way of thinking about it because it includes not just patents and copyrights and trademarks but also trade secrets. Sometimes those trade secrets are protected through semi-formal mechanisms like contracts, employment contracts, non-disclosure agreements, confidentiality agreements. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes these informal or semi-formal appropriation strategies are more like some sort of ad hoc branding strategy. Customer loyalty, the ability to improvise, to adapt quickly, to changing demand. These are all strengths that actors, micro entrepreneurs, especially in the informal sector, have. There's even some evidence in the case studies that free revealing, openly revealing or sharing your knowledge within the community of other informal sectors is in itself a kind of an appropriation strategy currently. But it's a kind of appropriation strategy because the belief is that if you share your ideas you may not get monetary value back like you would with a formal intellectual property license but what you get is something that's more valuable in this sector which is trust and reputation. And so we see that as itself an appropriation strategy. And I think it's been said already but the appropriation strategies that we see are as diverse as the informal sector itself. And so you have George's study, for example, talking about the importance of traditional knowledge. And in his study, he didn't get to this in his presentation but mentions the importance of connecting discussions about the informal economy with discussions related to the protection of traditional knowledge and access and benefit sharing in that context. A Chris Bulls study, this is our Kenyan collaborator, author to study on metal manufacturing in Kenya. And his study is fascinating because he reveals that even within the same so-called industry or sector, metal manufacturing among Kenya's Juakali, you have different attitudes towards appropriation strategies among different informal settlements. And so in situations where you're working in close physical proximity and secrecy is not really an option because everybody can see what you're doing, those survey respondents, those interview respondents actually valued open exchanges of knowledge. They're producing products for low income consumers, mass market products. But if you look at, or when Chris Bull looked at metal manufacturers who were producing for middle and upper income markets, there he found palpable differences in their responses and attitudes towards intellectual property. They actually saw trade secrets as valuable. And when Chris Bull looked at the Juakali who were working outside of the clusters in a more independent setting, those people actually thought that there was more of a role for formal intellectual property rights. So the point here is that even within something that's ostensibly a relatively homogenous group of actors, they're very different attitudes towards appropriation. My colleague Dick Kowuya in one of the studies for the Open Air Project talks about another really important dimension to this. And that's the flow of knowledge throughout an innovation system, like Erica talked about. The formal sector is not acting independently or isolated from the informal sector. There's a symbiotic relationship between the two. And so Dr. Kowuya studied the interactions between the formal and informal sector in Uganda, Macquarie University, and found that in this cutting edge science technology project to develop Kampala's electric vehicle, first electric vehicle in Central or East Africa, in fact, the formal sector actors in the university relied heavily on the informal sector actors to source parts, to fabricate the parts, and to actually turn what's otherwise a theoretical design into something that practically works in that local context. That leads to three recommendations. And I'll wrap up here, I think, those insights. The first recommendation for policy makers is I think it's really important to legitimize and nurture the informal economy. And this project, I think, has gone a long way into raising awareness about some of the benefits of the informal economy and innovation in it. Erica, in her study, recommends toward the end, in one scenario where you could imagine actually promoting more kinds of informal appropriation strategies, you may have benefits like more cohesive social networks. You may actually create more sustainable and stable employment relationships because if the way that you protect your idea is by retaining your employees, you have every incentive to treat those people better. And so when you take a systems-based approach, I think this is quite important. The second recommendation, I think, is to identify your source of engagement with the informal sector. And it's like Erica said, it's through those intermediary organizations. In every single one of the studies that I read and that I was involved with, there is some role for an intermediary organization, whether it's a trade association or a guild-like structure or an NGO. There's a really important role to be played there. And that's the key point of interaction between the formal and the informal sector and understanding how they're both part of the same socioeconomic framework. And the third recommendation, I think, would be to begin to think forward about these issues and these scenarios. It's all well and good to acknowledge the key priorities of the moment, but I also think it's important to think 10 or 20 years into the future and to imagine a scenario where informal is just the new normal. I mean, it already is, but what if we recognize that? And as policy makers, we took steps proactively to facilitate more innovation in the informal economy. And on that note, actually, let me just put in a little plug for another side event where we'll continue to talk about these issues and that's taking place on Thursday, this week, Thursday in this room, where we'll talk about two of the recent publications of the Open Air Network, Intellectual Property and Innovation in Africa, Collaborative Dynamics, which very much echoes exactly what Erica said about the importance of community and collaboration in innovation systems here and knowledge in innovation in Africa scenarios for the future. So to be continued on Thursday. Thank you. Thank you, Castan, for making the belated introduction. And I am here as a representative of the Department for Africa. We were a party to this whole initiative. We provided support to the team that was involved in crafting the terms of reference and then launching the whole work. I think if you have read the evaluation report, that is acknowledged by the author of the report. This is a groundbreaking initiative designed to, as far as innovation and intellectual property are concerned, to bridge the gap and it's been said several times between the formal and informal economy and a number of statistical elements which are mentioned in the two reports, namely Ghana and South Africa, clearly attest to the fact that the informal economy is very, very critical in Africa because it is a source of employment, it is a source for income, for those who are the bottom of the pyramid. So to that extent, I think it is very responsive to the whole raison d'etre of the development agenda, in other words, to try and find solutions in the IP realm to address some of the development challenges facing Africa. I should like to limit myself here to just six remarks. The first one is to say that the project findings and deliverables, namely the conceptual paper and the three country studies to all should be really brought to the notice of a wider audience as we move ahead. That can be done through various ways, through the WIPO web portal, that's one way, through publications, but more important through tailor events which will be targeting interested cycles such as policy makers, officials of IP institutions, business organizations, Chamber of Commerce, an industry association of entrepreneurs and small and medium sized enterprises. We believe that the critical wealth of knowledge that is contained in that report should really be brought to the notice of as many interested parties as possible. And we will see to it as a regional bureau for Africa as we go along in organizing events, targeting the various groups that I've mentioned to really disseminate the findings of this report. Number two, we believe that we should also try and deepen the analytical work regarding the contribution of IP and innovation to sustainable development through further involvement of institutions of higher learning in Africa. But when we count, when we call on those institutions, we should do it in relation to specific projects that have certain relevance for the environment, national concern environments. We may think of a number of projects. I mean, clearly traditional medicine, it's a very, very critical area because of its impact on the health sector across Africa. That is the fact that it is about 80% in Ghana. It's about the same number in most of the African countries and I believe that many countries have a comparative advantage here. As a friend from Ghana was talking, I was thinking of two countries that have gone a long way in the same area, namely Bokina Faso, not surprisingly a neighbor of Ghana, but also Mali. I'm not aware that they have reached the same level of sophistication at least in the case of Bokina Faso, but clearly that's one area and there if we are to deepen the analytical import of the study, we need in my view to bring on board the local institution of higher learnings in those countries because they would relate very easily to the problematic at stake. So I think that's one way of doing it. But it's not the only way, that's my third remark. In the process of the formulation of IP national and IP strategies, IP development plans, we need now to maybe think a bit more about engaging the authorities in maybe agreeing to identify one, two, or three projects which have an impact, which are from the informal economy but wherein we believe that there's a potential for innovation. In so doing, we would be able to maybe establish where possible the relevant production value chain and the mechanism of knowledge dissemination and appropriation. I'll come back to these two other points. In the same vein, if we were to engage the countries in developing IP strategies and plans, we should not lose sight of the fact that as we think of the technical assistance package that we may put in place, such package should also target micro-entrepreneurs by way of expert advice regarding, and we've been talking all along about breaking the informality, moving the fact that there is an interaction between the informal sector and the formal sector. So here, we need to pay a bit more attention to the fact that we need to support those micro-entrepreneurs whenever necessary, for instance, by providing them expert advice regarding filing of patents, to think about the relevance of other forms of appropriation for low technology, for instance, utility models in certain areas, particularly mechanical areas, and also how to facilitate training and technology transfer, and last but not least, how to help them to bear the cost related to the filing of patent, if necessary, but most likely of utility models and or trademarks. And I'll come back on the trademarks thing. So recognizing in all the fact that there is interaction between the formal and the informal economy, at some stage in the journey, many of the entrepreneur need, and we've seen it in the case of Ghana, to move to the more formal sphere of activity, particularly where IP and innovations are concerned, because at some point, you need to really make sure that you are able to claim that inventiveness, innovativeness, and so forth, that is the trademark of your activity. So we need to recognize that, and in our view, to begin to maybe deepen our research as to what are the best modalities that will enable those entrepreneurs to capture but also monetize the inventiveness, the creativity that is embedded in the activity. So we need to recognize, in this respect, the relevance of utility models as a means of appropriation of low-intensity innovation, because here we're talking about innovation, which are of an incremental nature, which are subject to adaptation of existing products and so forth, particularly in the mechanical field. We need to deepen our understanding of the relevance of non-traditional IP rights as appropriate mechanism for knowledge appropriation and monetization in the informal economy-generated innovation. This may be by way of sweet-generous protection, where the case is valid, or through other forms such as, and Jeremy mentioned trade secrets, he mentioned here the contracts by way of contracts, non-disclosure agreements, and so forth. But also we should recognize that, and the case of Ghana was very telling in that respect that we may also just use typical means of protection, such as trademarks and geographical indications, where appropriate in order to capture the commercial value of certain products that have low intensity of technological inventiveness. And you can see this a lot in the case of Ghana, whereby the medicine, although it's subjected to a certain process of testing and ensuring that it is not toxic, there's really not much inventiveness involved. But nevertheless, because it is, I would say, clean, it could be easily commercialized through the use of trademarks, through the use of designs, designs in the shape of the package in which those products are, which products contain. And in so doing, the small entrepreneur is able to capture or to position itself in the market and to gradually capture a certain share of the market. And there's a phenomenon of name recognition that will take place. And in so doing, he will be able to sell, not only in the local market, but also on the export market in neighboring countries. So this is for us the means through which we may be able to involve, engage our partners in the respective countries, primarily through a new design of IP development plans as I said, to make sure that, henceforth, we make sure that they are addressing also the requirements in the informal economy. Last, and I would emphasize that again, it is important that we do everything possible to give as much coverage to the findings and the deliverables that are contained in this report. And I think this is just a good start today, but it's not the last step. Thank you very much. Thank you, Hermann, for these very generous and pertinent comments. Sasha, final observation? Just very briefly, and thanks for your enthusiasm in helping disseminating the findings of this project. Technically today, as we presented it to CDIP just before the lunch break and had the project evaluated, this was pretty much the last day of this project. It would be a shame if it stays there. I think our analytical contribution from the Office of the Chief Economist comes to some sort of an end today. But I think if we want to disseminate and use this, we ought to think about three areas of focus. Now the first one is further analytical work in this field that actually marries and continues to marry the innovation community and the informal economy community and helps these two communities work together. I don't fear that this will not happen because we brought a great team of people together that will continue to collaborate. As suggested by member states in the CDIP, it ought to be possible also to apply that framework to additional sectors and countries. I mean, obviously, I think we went beyond anecdotal here, but still we selected three sectors on one continent. So analytically appealing would be to find out whether behaviors are different in other sectors or even across continents. And I'm thinking in particular here of India, maybe Latin America. Now the second challenge maybe on the way forward is to disseminate it into policy circles. And as emphasized over and over again today in the presentations, this is new for policy makers, even for innovation policy makers. Now we will probably need the help of the bureaus to disseminate it to the proper channels. We have developed a quite detailed policy framework in the conceptual study, also with ideas on how existing intellectual property approaches should be applied in the informal sector. Maybe even raising the questions if innovation should take place in some aspects of the IP system itself to be more fitting. But that's a document, the policy framework on paper. Now that needs to be tested against real policy realities. And with the help of Erica, George, we can maybe work with the different ministries to test that further. And finally, I mentioned earlier that an important contribution should be happening on the front of measurement. Increasingly we see reports on innovation in Africa that essentially try to imitate OECD R&D style manuals. Essentially focused as I said earlier on measuring the formal R&D expenditures in informal firms. So this is very important and laudable. However, I do think that we need to push the lessons learned here also to that measurement community. I'm thinking in particular of the lessons in surveying these communities, this sort of sampling, because you can't just send out 50,000 questionnaires to some entities and hoping for a written feedback in three weeks time or something to these sort of communities. I think also we need to ask the questions very differently, right? I mean, we do send to firms in developed economies who sent these innovation surveys. Eurostat does this in the European communities in the United States, it exists. So it asks questions like, are you innovating? Yes, no. Is it marketing innovation, organizational innovation? And even developed country firms find answering these questions challenging sometimes because, you know, so you can imagine what this would do to informal actors. And I think also informal actors think slightly differently about innovation. I mean, just to give you an example, and then I'll finish in the Oslo manual of the OECD, right? Which is, you know, like the Bible if you like a little bit of innovation management. The definition of innovation just entails the introduction of a new product or process to the economy. No question is asked on impact generated, et cetera. Now what we did notice quite extensively in these studies is that informal economy actors only consider innovation if a real problem is solved, right? And successfully, if that solution to a problem is successfully deployed, you know, alleviating poverty or increasing welfare to some sort of extent. So when we revisit even the Oslo manual, maybe it could be, which is ongoing now, and one of our members is part of that process, we could introduce some of these notions as well. So this would be my three quick takeaways.