The African Copyright & Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) Project is probing the relationship in African countries between national copyright environments and access to hard-copy and digital learning materials. The project is probing this relationship within an access to knowledge (A2K) framework – a framework which regards the protection/promotion of user access as one of the central objectives of copyright law.

This project, supported by Canada’s IDRC and South Africa’s Shuttleworth Foundation, and managed by the Wits University LINK Centre in Johannesburg, began in October 2007 with legal researchers in five African countries (Egypt, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda) preparing initial “environmental scans” of the copyright contexts in their countries.