1. INTRODUCTION
With globalization, and our current information society, the appreciation and promotion of
creativity, innovation and competitiveness are vital to progress. Global dynamics have already
highlighted the crucial importance of intellectual property (IP) in achieving this goal – the
intellectual property system being a cross-cutting area that focuses on the appreciation of human
ideas, thereby promoting the competitiveness, progress and development of nations.
Mindful of this, the Government of Mozambique is introducing a basic legal and institutional
framework for the regulation and administration of intellectual property, while the various bodies
with responsibility in the matter have carried out a wide range of actions in this area.
Mozambique has not yet, however, come up with a common vision to inspire this framework,
and this has led to some problems in harmonizing the sector.
As the country needs to be equipped with this fundamental tool for injecting dynamism into the
intellectual property system, the Government of Mozambique has included the approval of an
Intellectual Property Strategy as one of the goals in its five-year plan.
The Intellectual Property Strategy represents the vision that the government and others active in
the system – such as the intellectual property management institutes, scientific research
institutes, universities, innovators, rights holders and their representative bodies, economic
agents and civil society in general – have for Mozambique, and the mechanism best suited to
serving the country’s interests in terms of its economic, social, technological, scientific and
cultural development.
The Intellectual Property Strategy takes into consideration the main national, regional and
international instruments guiding Mozambique’s development, such as Agenda 2025, the
Expanded Program for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA), the Government’s FiveYear Plan, the Millennium Development Goals, the New Partnership for Africa's Development
(NEPAD) and the various policies and strategies of the relevant sectors in the sphere of