Intellectual property rights and innovation are two sides of the same coin, Sherine Nasr discovers what Egypt is doing to foster both "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." No more accurate a formula exists to describe the divide between developed and developing countries than that once proposed by Apple's CEO Steve Jobs. Innovation has different implications to a scientist and an economist. "If the applied research doesn't have an impact on the economy, and will not generate money, it is not an innovation," said Hamid El-Zoheiri, coordinator of the 11 billion Euro Research, Development and Innovation Programme (RDI) launched by the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the European Commission in 2007. Thus it becomes clear that the commercialisation of innovation -- at least for the businessman -- is what really counts. This brings up the issue of intellectual property rights that should be maintained and protected. "We used to value only physical assets, but intangible assets are becoming more valuable. The market value of companies are increasingly based on intangible versus tangible assets," said Beat Mollet from Nestle who indicated that his company owns several thousand trademarks and patents and signs no less than 300 research contracts with different universities every year. Egypt has been among the first countries in the region to apply the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) that came into full effect in January 2005 after a five-year transitional period to allow national laws and legislation come into line with the agreement. A growing interest in protecting intellectual property rights has been accompanied by an awakening of the importance of a knowledge and innovation- based economy in the country. A long-term industrial plan has been laid out to turn Egypt into a main export hub for medium technology manufactured products in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The initiative is led by the Industrial Modernisation Centre (IMC) that so far has serviced some 12,000 industrial projects in different sectors. "Our major objective is to maximise exports and gradually shift to a higher technological component in local products," said Hesham Wagdi, technical assistance and national programmes director at the IMC. Some 80 per cent of the IMC's clients fall within the small enterprise category while seven per cent is medium-sized enterprises. According to Wagdi, research and development are at the forefront of IMC's plan for 2009. A LE100 million fund to promote research and innovation on the national, sectoral and individual levels was established in collaboration with the Ministry of Scientific Research. "A total of 141 projects worth LE175 million have been executed, submitted or are ongoing in the fields of pharmaceuticals, engineering, textiles, energy and others," said Wagdi. The EU-Egypt Innovation Fund (EEIF) is another success story. As the main component of the RDI programme, EEIF's main task is to link research and innovation to business application, on the one hand, and to enhance Egyptian-European partnership to enable efficient technology transfer. According to El-Zoheiri, the programme has two grant schemes: first, a 100,000-500,000 euro scheme focuses on projects that contribute to sustainable development in Egypt through increasing capital investment, enhancing technological innovation and improving competitiveness of the economic sector. Projects vary from agriculture competitiveness to rice waste management, producing effective poultry vaccination, and improving wind turbine blades. "The total amount of grant is estimated at six million euros awarded to six projects," said El-Zoheiri. Second, a 10,000-25,000 euro grant scheme aims at raising awareness about the importance of research and development and enhancing matchmaking between industry and academia to identify or solve technical challenges facing the industrial sector. In the area of promoting innovative research and solutions in the information technology sector, the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) has adopted a number of programmes to promote collaborative research projects that bring value to IT companies, universities and the technology community at large. Established in 2005, ITIDA managed to expand its budget to LE19 million this year to cover six grant programmes aimed at fostering and utilising Egypt's research and development capabilities in the field of IT and its applications. "We have developed many innovations via Egyptian researchers. We also have an intellectual property rights office to promote software copyrights and to raise awareness of intellectual property rights amongst the IT community," said Sherif Hashem, executive vice-president of ITIDA. Hashem added that a growing awareness about the intellectual property rights in the field of IT helped to remove Egypt from the Piracy Watch List report for 2008. "This will lead to more profits for IT companies," he said. Finally, innovation is a process not a gift. "Egypt has finally realised that there's a problem, but the wheel has started turning and the outcome looks promising," said Wagdi.
