There’s no denying that Africa’s biodiversity is amongst the richest and most diverse in the world, with the continent’s living organisms accounting for more than a quarter of global biodiversity. However, a complex configuration of challenges and opportunities exist to ensure that debates around conservation and exploitation of biodiversity are often heated. These include mitigating against environmental degradation; enabling the leveraging the medicinal, commercial and research potential of a particular region's flora and fauna; and protecting the interests of indigenous communities.

Central to addressing and capitalising on these challenges and opportunities will be securing the rights to resources, knowledge and land that have been alienated over the centuries. In this talk, Julius Akinyemi will be introducing the Nature eBank, a new initiative which seeks to address this imbalance, enabling the cataloguing of endemic plants based on a new legal framework developed with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) for a ‘Sovereign IP’ for the continent's plants.