The Nigerian government has inked a three-year exclusive IPR (Intellectual Property Right) deal with Developing Africa Group (DAG) to build a national wallet that would allow the commercialization of any intellectual property (IP) forms generated and registered in the country, both domestically and globally. People in Nigeria will be able to upload any form IP rights to the marketplace, which will use the Algorand blockchain, and trade, sell or exchange them abroad while collecting the royalties and proceeds of these operations on their wallets.
The IPR exclusivity agreement kicks off the development of the country's official blockchain-based platform, which will allow creators and innovators to upload IP forms like trademarks, patents, and copyrights such as songs, lyrics, videos, shows, lectures, podcasts, and all other forms of streamable content for trade, sell, or exchange abroad, while collecting royalties and proceeds in their wallets.
"Algorand's protocol not only provides the performance, scalability, security and functionality required to implement such a large scale project but is also environment-friendly which is important for the Government and has a huge philosophical match with the `creators economy industry´ we're targeting here," stated Ben Oguntala, CEO of Developing Africa Group.
Tokens on the Algorand blockchain
Nigeria's government has tasked DAG, a UK-based Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Commercialization organization, with developing the platform. Following on that, DAG has picked Koibanx as the tokenization and payments engine to be used, with official clearance, and the Algorand Blockchain as the protocol to build on top of.
All tokens will be launched on top of the Algorand Blockchain.
"What the Developing Africa Group has achieved is truly amazing. The Nigerian IPR Wallet is probably the largest crypto project worldwide. When we took El Salvador´s challenge (Koibanx also managed Chivo´s Lightning Network implementation) we impacted the life of millions of citizens, after this experience we embarked on the Colombian government platform handling tens of millions…I believe this initiative could change the life of +50M people easily. Since we launched Koibanx back in 2015 we were convinced Blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies were the foundational building blocks for economic development in emerging markets, being able to have an active part in how is happening is definitely a privilege," said Leo Elduayen, Koibanx´s CEO.
Intellectual Property registration in Nigeria
In Nigeria, trademark registration is currently done for a seven-year period, with the option to renew for another 14 years. Before the expiration of the first term granted and any future term, the proprietor must pay the stipulated renewal fee of N12,000 to keep the trademark registration active.
By 2009, Nollywood had overtaken Hollywood as the world's second-largest film industry, trailing only India's Bollywood. With over 1,000 films produced in 2021, Nollywood is a $3,3 billion industry. This new monetization strategy adopted by the West Afrikan country's government is expected to assist government agencies like the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) to better track, monitor, and collect revenues for the Nigerian film industry.
— By Bataung Qhotsokoane
