Fred Matiangi, cabinet secretary for ICT. CC image courtesy of CCK
The creative industry in Kenya is plagued by white collar thieves and pirates who prey on unsuspecting creative artists, stealing their intellectual property or underpaying them, according to Ministry of ICT cabinet secretary Dr Fred Matiangi.
Matiangi was a speaking at a forum that brought together the Office of the Attorney General, the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) and the five ministries dealing with the creative industry in Kenya.
“Content developers including software developers, artists and other innovative professionals need to seek for other up to date means of protecting their hard-earned products from this era of internet and digitalised systems because these make it very easy for pirates to access content,” said Matiangi.
It also emerged that poor coordination among government agencies to enforce laws on plagiarism, piracy and counterfeiting is to blame for losses in the creative industry in Kenya.
“We are still lagging behind in quite a number of areas, such as understanding the creative sector, lack of collaboration within government agencies, copyright monetization, inadequate funding, adequate enforcement and the proposed merger of intellectual property institutions,” said KECOBO chairman Tom Mshindi.
He added that some of the leading economies in Africa such as Nigeria had to include contributions made by the creative industry when re-basing their economy.
Attorney General Professor Githu Muigai said with better inter-ministerial coordination Kenya has the potential to drive and coordinate strategic activities across all creative sectors that will bear fruit. The output would be the development of a road map to position the local creative industries as a catalyst for a Kenyan knowledge society.
