I spent a week in October of 2025 at the headquarters of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) for another WIPO-ARIPO patent-drafting workshop, my ninth as an instructor, where the participants spent an intense week learning about patents and engaging in patent claim-drafting exercises directed to a variety of inventions.
My first presentation on day one.
People often express surprise when I tell them I teach patent-drafting workshops for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in developing countries. They generally inquire politely, but I sense their surprise in thinking that there might be better and more direct means for providing development aid.
Starting with the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, #9 focuses on "industry, innovation, and infrastructure." Patents are both the fuel and bedrock for converting innovation into sustainable industry. Without patents, sourcing investment and pricing power, which are the lifeblood of turning an innovation into a successful enterprise that can drive the growth and wealth of the local and regional economy, often prove elusive. With an innovation-fueled economy, all of the other sustainable development goals (e.g., reducing poverty and hunger, promoting health and well-being, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, etc.) can be more readily addressed.
Over nearly twenty years, I have spent many weeks and months training and working with innovators and those serving innovators all over Africa and across Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Brilliantly creative inventors are found all over the globe--even in remote tribes, from where I have met (via the WIPO Inventor Assistor Program), for example, a young Masai tribe member who developed a thriving nation-wide business based on a high-tech solution for preventing predatory lion attacks, which has saved livelihoods while also increasing lion numbers.
Patents can be a critical tool for any enterprising innovator, but they typically cannot obtain a valuable patent without a skilled patent drafter (and prosecutor) who can optimally characterize an invention and secure its protection; and these patent drafting/prosecuting skills are in short supply across the globe. This critical need was reinforced by a discussion I had this week with a participant from a small island nation in Africa, where English is not the principal language (it was a former colony of another European country). He told me how talented inventors from his country had flown to the European country that had been their former colonizer to find a skilled patent attorney to draft and file a patent application for them. Flying to Europe from this country required an extraordinary investment for the inventors, but we often encounter inventors so determined to bring their ideas to the world that they are willing to make extraordinary sacrifices.
Another participant recounted her experience in a recent WIPO International Patent Drafting Training Program (registration for the 2026 edition just opened!), and shared how that training changed her life, as she was then recruited to draft patent applications to facilitate the commercialization of new technologies from the University of Zimbabwe.
We closed the week with a visit to the recently built (2018) Innovation Hub at the University of Zimbabwe, where Professor Ancila Nhamo shared the university's ambitious policies and practices, including IP strategies, to promote innovation and commercialization of the university's innovation to move Zimbabwe forward, with support from Zimbabwe government.
The Innovation Hub at the University of ZImbabwe
Professor Nhamo sharing with us the University of Zimbabwe's policies and practices for commercializing the university's technologies.
What if every county had enough skilled patent drafters? It takes time to build that capacity, but each patent-drafting workshop plants dozens of new "seeds" with each participant taking their skills back to their country for further development, and we see many then sprout successful practices to improve their own fortunes while providing a critical resource to their community for economic advancement and, sometimes, helping to solve the world's problems. We simply cannot afford to waste the creative genius of over half the globe.
Here are some more photos of our week learning patent drafting at the headquarters of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) in Harare and from around Harare.
I had time on Saturday to visit the Mukuvisi Woodlands on the edge of Harare for a bit of mountain biking.
Sorry, the wildlife came around to the front of this watering hole the last time I visited—but not this time.
Africa Unity Square across from The Meikles, where we stayed.
The long-standing flower market on the edge of Unity Square