3^rd November 2022, Kampala, Uganda.

The Anti-Counterfeit Authority Kenya Executive Director Dr. Robi Mbugua Njoroge made a maiden visit to Kampala Uganda under the invitation of the Uganda’s Anti-Counterfeit Network Africa (ACN) to attend various stakeholder forums on regional efforts towards combating counterfeit trade.

Dr. Robi attended a number of stakeholder events and visited several government institutions tasked with protection of intellectual property rights. He visited the Uganda Communications Commission, the Uganda Registration Services Bureau that conducts Registrations and provides Information pertaining to Civil, Business and Intellectual Property matters and climaxed his visit by attending a forum for Ministry of Agriculture
, prosecutors, magistrates, law enforcers, and farmers among others. 

While rallying the collaboration call, Dr. Robi noted that the fight against counterfeiting needed collaboration at all levels of stakeholder spectrum both at national, regional and internal stage. “We are here to exchange ideas on how better to improve collaboration in the fight against counterfeit trade with a major call for regional cooperation to tackle the problem”. He said.

In his keynote address at the Magistrates and Prosecutors training workshop at Protea Hotel in Kampala, He emphasized the need for cross-border collaboration due to the transformational and international nature of counterfeiting crime. “It is important to have counterfeit measures and collaboration at the national and regional level if we want to defeat this crime,” He further called for informed criminal justice system players (magistrates, investigators, and prosecutors), stressing that the “effective Intellectual Property (IP) justice system relies wholly on the effectiveness of fast-tracking counterfeit related cases and bringing justice of IP disputes”.

Citing Kenya’s multi-agency efforts in enforcement and public outreach, Mbugua called on Uganda to emulate the Kenya’s national action plan on counterfeiting and illicit trade .He said the plan contained practical approaches to deal with problems including weak regulatory regimes, uncoordinated enforcement mechanisms, limited agency resources, low catch-up with technological advancements, low consumer awareness, inadequate screening of cargo and long unmanned borders.

Trade in counterfeit and contraband goods remains a major problem for East African Nations despite a decade of unprecedented legal and institutional efforts to control it. Dr. Mbugua called for enhanced institutional collaboration saying ‘institutions combating counterfeiting are not fully collaborating in the war against counterfeits.’ He said the region remained vulnerable to counterfeits mainly because it has long porous borders with Somalia, Uganda and Tanzania (across Lake Victoria), which reduce the ability to detect counterfeit smugglers.