FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
16th October 2026
The Symposium on Copyright and Related Rights Management, Organised by the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in collaboration with the Republic of Uganda through the Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) from 19–21 October, will bring African creators, institutions and partners together to examine how stronger copyright systems can turn creativity into sustainable income, enterprise and development.
KAMPALA, Uganda
Every day, African music is streamed, African films are broadcast, and African stories, images and designs cross borders and platforms most of their creators will never see. The question that follows is a simple one, but it sits at the heart of Africa’s fastest-growing creative industries, when that work generates value, who actually captures it and how?
That question will be at the centre of Kampala this October, when ARIPO, WIPO and URSB convenes the ARIPO@50 Symposium on Copyright and Related Rights Management, from 19–21 October 2026. Convened under the theme “Empowering Creativity: Harnessing IP for Sustainable Development in Africa,” the Symposium marks ARIPO’s 50th anniversary year with a conversation about what comes next, not only what has been achieved.
For African creators being musicians, filmmakers, writers, photographers, designers and a fast-growing generation of digital creators the answer to that opening question increasingly determines whether creative talent becomes a livelihood or simply goes uncompensated. Copyright is the legal foundation that lets a creator prove a work is theirs, license it with confidence, and be paid when it is used. Where that foundation is weak, value leaks out of the system; where it is strong, creativity can become income, income can become enterprise, and enterprise can become jobs. That is the chain the Symposium sets out to examine.
“Africa has never lacked creativity as our filmmakers, musicians, designers and writers prove that every day,” Mr. Bemanya Twebaze who is the ARIPO Director General, said. “What we are building at ARIPO@50 is the machinery that turns that creativity into lasting value: stronger copyright systems, better cooperation between our Member States, and institutions African creators can trust. Fifty years in, our story is no longer only about protection, it is about the future we build together.”
No single country or institution can build that machinery alone. The Symposium is expected to bring together around 100 participants, , including representatives of ARIPO’s Member States, national copyright offices, Collective Management Organisations, the judiciary, government and enforcement agencies, and creative-industry leaders. Their shared task is practical rather than ceremonial: aligning laws, registries, enforcement and licensing systems across borders so that a work protected in one African market retains real value in another.
Kampala’s role in that story runs deeper than logistics. It was in Uganda in 2021 that the Kampala Protocol was adopted. In 2026, Uganda brought a new Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Amendment Act, reshaping how protection, licensing and enforcement work at the national level. Hosting the Symposium puts Uganda, at the front of a conversation with consequences well beyond the country’s borders.
“Uganda is proud to welcome Africa to Kampala for this conversation,” Mr Mustapher Ntale who is the URSB Ag. Registrar General said. “Copyright means little to a creator until they understand it, can use it, and see it change their income. Hosting the ARIPO@50 Symposium gives Ugandan and African institutions, creators and partners a chance to learn from one another and take that understanding home.”
WIPO is expected to participate as a technical and strategic partner, contributing international expertise and cooperation to a discussion that increasingly matters far beyond specialist IP circles. Their presence, alongside ARIPO’s Member States and a range of development and industry partners, reflects a wider recognition: building creative economies that work for creators requires governments, regulators, collecting societies, courts, platforms and businesses to move together, not in isolation.
Across three days, the Symposium’s sessions will translate that cooperation into the practical questions creators actually face and how royalties reach the people who earned them, how ownership is proven and defended, and how a work made in one African country can be protected as it travels to the next. These are not abstract legal debates. They shape whether a musician in Kampala, a filmmaker in Lagos or a designer in Nairobi can build a business on what they make.
The Symposium forms part of ARIPO’s wider 50th-anniversary programme, which traces back to the organisation’s founding under the 1976 Lusaka Agreement and will culminate in anniversary celebrations in Lusaka, Zambia, this December. Kampala is where that anniversary looks forward: a milestone year used not to catalogue the past, but to set a direction for how Africa’s regional IP institutions serve its creators over the next fifty years.
The Symposium on Copyright and Related Rights Management will take place in Kampala from 19–21 October 2026.
Media Contact:
Denis Nabende
Principal Communications Officer, URSB
denis.nabende@ursb.go.ug
+256 758 341008
Susan Mwiti
Head Communucations, ARIPO
smwiti@aripo.org
+263 782 300903
ENDS
Skip to content
Skip to footer
