Introduction

This book arose out of the collaboration of the editors in an ACP-EU project: ‘The protection of Geographical Indications (GI): Generating Empirical Evidence at Country and Product Level to Support African ACP Country Engagement in the Doha Round Negotiations’. The overall objective of the project was to generate empirical evidence, based on country/sub-regional and product case studies, regarding the benefits that African members of the ACP Group can obtain from enhanced multilateral Geographical Indication (GI) protection. Among the specific objectives of the project were: (i) an assessment of the suitability of existing international GI protection regimes for the effective protection of African GIs and provision of recommendations for needed changes; (ii) the establishment of a replicable methodology for use in Africa and other ACP regions for analysing the dynamics of capturing economic value from GIs; (iii) evalutaion of access to GI-protected products by local populations; (iv) an evaluation of the role of governments in the GI framework; (v) an exploration of the costs of establishing and administering a GI regime in a country and the costs of developing, registering and enforcing individual GIs; and (vi) recommendations on the optimum international framework to enable African countries to capture value out of GIs.