South Africa

Research into African open business models is led by the Commons-sense programme at the LINK Centre, Wits University, with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The open business model project forms part of a comprehensive programme into intellectual property alternatives for African development hosted at the LINK Centre.

The Commons-sense programme aims to form equal partnerships with African institutions in order to develop local curricula for use in business schools and related subject areas. By scoping the local online business terrain and analysing the extent to which the “openness” of various models plays a part in an organisation’s ongoing effectiveness (in terms of profit, branding, future market access etc) the African open business model project will develop a set of comprehensive ‘talk-pieces’ for use in universities around the world.

Other projects hosted by the programme include: Creative Commons South Africa, a multidisciplinary project into the use and viability of Creative Commons licences in South Africa and regionally. ccSA has developed a portal to showcase the local use of alternative copyright policies by African organisations and participates in a number of local fora to explain their application in various sectors.

‘Developing a Southern Dialogue on Media, Culture and Society’ is a partnership between Creative Commons Brazil and Creative Commons South Africa to initiate debate around the impact of WIPO’s ‘Development Agenda’ on local socio-economic development – especially in the media and culture sectors.

The Commons-sense programme is also developing a number of projects around digital archiving of African culture and heritage, and growing the use and availability of African public domain film, video and literary materials. Our aim is to become one of the leading think-tanks on intellectual property for African development in the 21st century.