Cameroon joins the rest of the international community this Tuesday April 26 to observe the 40^th edition of the World Intellectual Property Rights Day amidst growing challenges facing innovation and invention in the country. Celebrated on the theme, “Designing the Future”, the country seeks to use the day to carry out sensitisation campaigns on the need to uphold intellectual property, the gateway to sustainable socio-economic development.

According to the terms of reference sent to our newsroom from the Department of Technological Development and Industrial Property of the Ministry of Industries, Mines and Technological Development, daunting challenges like the continuous importation of manufactured products at the detriment of local production and the country’s trade balance and more so, the not-so-good industrialisation and the competitiveness of the country’s industries and enterprises with others elsewhere, need to be surmounted. In the face of this, people are forced to seek survival methods like counterfeiting which is a great economic destroyer. Reason why, stakeholders seek to use the day to sensitise business people on the importance of setting up industries based on local inventions so as to create jobs as well as bring inventors and innovators to go for products that meet the direct needs of the people.

Given that intellectual property, by this year’s theme, “Designing the Future” seeks to encourage designers to produce attractive items that are easier, more comfortable and safer to use, by helping to protect original designs against unauthorised copying and imitation, officials here say if well structured, intellectual property could contribute greatly in realising the dream of making Cameroon an emerging economy by 2035.