In May 2019 the Norwegian Copyright Development Association (NORCODE) organised the second African two-week training program on collective management of copyright with 15 countries from across Africa in attendance. Participants and experts © NORCODE
The training was organised in cooperation with the Government of Ghana and ARIPO and with the assistance of IFRRO, CISAC, IFPI, SCAPR and the WIPO Academy. Participants came from Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, and included IFRRO’s members BBDA, CopyGhana, COSBOTS, COSOMA, COSOTA, MASA and SOCILADRA.
IFRRO, at the invitation of NORCODE’s Managing Director Inger Dirdal and the Training’s Moderator Tarja Koskinen-Olsson, joined the program. Pierre-Olivier Lesburguères, IFRRO’s Manager for Policy and Regional Development, presented on the different organizational structures in the text and image sector and the interaction between licensing, private copying levies and operator fee. He also led group discussions on specific reprography subjects. Ben Nyadzi, Executive Director of CopyGhana, explained how the RRO has successfully signed licences with higher educational institutions in the country.
At the close of the onsite training session in Accra, the participants agreed on an action plan which includes “exploring and promoting public-private partnerships and possibilities that exist both locally and through ARIPO” and “promoting private copying remuneration systems in all sectors (music, audiovisual and text and images) in countries where such a system does not currently exist or is not yet implemented”.
IFRRO will continue working with NORCODE and with the participants and in particular those that have chosen study projects in the field of reprography.
