Open AIR

Over the past fifteen years, Open AIR’s research has evolved around three interconnected themes—technology hubs, Indigenous knowledge, and informal innovation. These themes emerged from the network’s strategic foresight research, which envisioned three future scenarios for Africa’s knowledge economy and guided Open AIR’s long-term exploration of inclusive and collaborative innovation.

Open AIR’s work on tech hubs explores how Africa’s makerspaces, incubators, and science labs connect local creativity to global networks, laying the groundwork for the AI and data-driven technologies now taking shape across the continent.

Work on Indigenous entrepreneurship explores how communities draw on traditional knowledge systems to build sustainable enterprises, contributing to local livelihoods while shaping more inclusive approaches to IP and innovation.

The theme of informal innovation shows how people solve challenges outside of formal economic structures, demonstrating that innovation thrives through shared knowledge, social networks, and flexible use of IP.

As a research network, Open AIR places publications at the heart of its work—connecting on-the-ground evidence with innovative policy thinking. Its annual reports, flagship books, journal articles, and working papers reflect the network’s role as a broker of knowledge that advances innovation across Africa and beyond.

Open AIR’s research spans a range of cross-cutting topics that link its projects and themes, connecting the research portfolio together. Through work on laws and policies, gender and equality, artificial intelligence, maker movements, and innovation metrics, the network explores how knowledge governance shapes inclusive and sustainable innovation.

We analyse how intellectual property, data governance, and multilevel regulation impact the development and distribution of biomedical technologies, informing more equitable approaches to health innovation.

Open AIR’s AI research investigates how intellectual property, data ownership, and regulatory systems influence the development and scaling of African AI technologies, informing fair and locally grounded governance.

Our work on the maker movement investigates how African makers, fablabs and open hardware communities contribute to innovation, skills development and socio-economic inclusion beyond formal R&D models.

By combining field-based research with rigorous policy analysis, Open AIR provides timely, relevant advice that helps national and international law-makers design regulatory frameworks grounded in African realities.

We investigate how intellectual property, entrepreneurship and innovation governance impact women and girls in Africa, producing evidence to advance inclusive frameworks and drive progress toward SDG 5.

Open AIR advances evidence-based approaches to innovation measurement by capturing the informal, incremental, and socially embedded innovation that mainstream metrics miss, offering a sharper lens for African policymaking.