The political economy of intellectual property rights: the paradox of Article 27 exemplified in Ghana

Christiaan De Beukelaer and Martin Fredriksson

Review of African Political Economy, 2019, vol. 46, issue 161, 459-479

Abstract: Orthodox copyright scholarship frames piracy in ‘developing’ countries as a detrimental and illegal practice that results from these countries’ lack of economic, social and cultural development. It argues that piracy needs to be discouraged, regulated, and finally overcome for legitimate business to flourish. In this article, the authors challenge this viewpoint and question whether the implementation of international copyright instruments in legislation across Africa really promotes those local economies or if it merely exposes them to neo-colonial exploitation. While the early international treaties on intellectual property rights (IPR) were formulated by European states and implemented in most parts of Africa through colonial laws, more recent legislation has been globally implemented through institutions such as the United Nations or the World Trade Organization, which remain dominated by Western interests. Through a structured overview of the adoption of IPR treaties in African countries, the authors advance a political economy perspective of intellectual property rights as a (neo-)colonial regime.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03056244.2018.1500358 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revape:v:46:y:2019:i:161:p:459-479

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CREA20

DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2018.1500358

Access Statistics for this article

Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

More articles in Review of African Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().