Geographical Indication (GI) options for Ethiopian Coffee and Ghanaian Cocoa

Perspectives on Intellectual Property from Botswana’s Publicly Funded Researchers
Institutional funding for research
Respondents were asked to rate the level of funding for research at their institutions
from four sources: government, NGO, international and institutional.
As Table 15.10 shows, 66% of the respondents rated government research funding
support to their institutions as low, while 9% said it was high. A majority of
respondents (63%) rated funding support from NGOs as low. International funding
support for research was rated by 40% as medium, while 25% said it was high.
Institutional funding for research was assessed to be low by 46%, medium by 40%
and high by 14%.
Table 15.10: Funding levels from different sources
Rating of research funding
from
Government (n = 161
respondents)
Institution (n = 160
respondents)
International bodies (n = 159
respondents)
High Medium Low
Number % Number % Number %
15 9.3 40 24.8 106 65.8
23 14.4 64 40.0 73 45.6
40 25.2 64 40.3 55 34.6
NGOs (n = 152 respondents) 16 10.5 40 26.3 96 63.2
6. Conclusions
The study found a lack of knowledge of the prevailing legal and policy frameworks
governing IP at the institutional and national levels in Botswana. Although 54.2%
of the researchers indicated that their institutions had IP policies, the majority of
the researchers were unaware of the content of such policies. This lack of knowledge
of the legal and regulatory framework is likely to hinder IP development
and may be contributing to the low usage of IP rights. Maister et al. (2011) made
similar observations about the lack of awareness of IP frameworks at research
institutes and universities in Burundi and Rwanda, respectively.
The lack of knowledge about commercialisation of research output from publicly
funded research indicates that most researchers have failed to engage with
their institutional IP policies. Botswana has a very low level of patenting (MCST,
2005). The lack of knowledge about commercialisation may also point to the poor
quality of research institutions’ IP policies. Creating awareness of IP and its utility
in generating value from research outputs is a key area that requires urgent
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