Prospects for Open Licensing of Knowledge Materials in Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia, one of the world's poorest countries, has in the past two decades made significant strides in national educational attainment. However, the country's educational policy objectives still face numerous barriers. In this piece the author argues that a key challenge for Ethiopia's education system is access to knowledge (A2K), specifically access to copyright-protected scholarly and learning materials. The author proposes increased use of open-licensed materials, such as those licensed under the Creative Commons (CC) suite of licensing tools, which take a flexible approach to copyright in order to allow users to, inter alia, engage in permission-free copying and re-distribution of the works. Greater use of such open materials would, the author contends, produce cost savings for the Ethiopian government, allowing the state to increase its investments in other key components of the educational system such as facilities, Internet connectivity and teacher training and support.