Mr. Bertin Niyigaba

Mr. Bertin Niyigaba

Mr. Bertin Niyigaba

Mr. Bertin is an Intellectual Property Expert, a founder of a pan-African organisation called IP Span Africa head-quartered in Kigali, Rwanda. The mission of this organization is to fostering Africa’s innovation sector through empowering intellectual property and technology transfer.

He is the Executive Board Member of Global Intellectual Property Alliance (GLIPA) and Co-Chair for African region. GLIPA is a network of networks dedicated to empower IP to advance global communities with Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

He is the former Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Officer at Rwanda Development Board (National IP Office). His main mandate was to handle issues/cases arising from Intellectual Property Right including but not limited to the “Oppositions for the registration of intellectual properties and other IP disputes.”

Bertin is a WIPO Scholar as after quitting his fulltime job at RDB, the World Intellectual Property Organisation awarded him a scholarship to pursue a Master’s degree in Intellectual Property Law and Innovation Policy Development at Korea Development Institute (KDI School), South Korea. In addition to that, he holds a bachelor degree of Laws (LLB) from the School of Law, University of Rwanda.

His experience and academic achievements in the areas of intellectual property and technology transfer qualifies him to understand and champion the context of Rwandan and regional Intellectual Property System and African Technology Landscape as well.