From 8 to 12 May 2023, at the invitation of the Mali Directorate General of Customs, the World Customs Organization (WCO) delivered a national workshop on combatting counterfeiting and piracy in Bamako (Mali).

This five-day workshop, which was attended by 20 officials from Mali Customs, comes under the umbrella of the WCO’s Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Strategy, which gives pride of place to capacity building activities in this area for Member Customs administrations.

The main aims of this workshop were to (i) provide an overview of best practices in combatting counterfeiting and piracy; (ii) present the details of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS); and (iii) familiarize the participants with risk analysis and targeting techniques to detect counterfeit goods and the functionalities of the WCO’s “IPR CENcomm” secure communication tool.

In his welcome address, Inspector General Amadou Konaté, Director General of Mali Customs, stressed that “Customs mobilization to combat counterfeiting and piracy, so as to protect the ability of companies to create jobs and innovate, and also to combat the large-scale trafficking that threatens the health and safety of consumers, is a priority for Mali.”

As he officially opened the workshop, Mr. Traoré Abdoulaye, Secretary General of the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, representing the Ministry of Finance, welcomed the workshop initiative and thanked the WCO Secretariat for its support for the IPR protection work done by Mali Customs.

The second day of the training workshop was given over to rights holders, who shared with the audience their techniques for detecting cases of IPR infringements in relation to their products. An exchange of views was then held with representatives of the other national authorities involved in IPR protection, namely the Centre Malien de Promotion de la Propriété Industrielle (Malian Centre for the Promotion of Industrial Property, CEMAPI), the Bureau Malien du droit d'auteur (Malian Copyright Office, BUMDA), the Direction de la Pharmacie et du Médicament (Directorate of Pharmacy and Medicine) (Ministry of Health), a prosecutor from the city of Bamako and two lawyers approved by the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI), with a view to devising and implementing a national strategy to combat counterfeiting and piracy.

The workshop ended with operational activities at two locations in Bamako: the Président Modibo Kéita Senou International Airport and the Faladié main customs office. In this last part, the participants were able to test on the ground what they had learned from the discussions on the third day about targeting and selection techniques for effective identification of goods infringing IPRs.

The workshop was led by an expert from the WCO Secretariat specializing in IPRs with the assistance of two pre-accredited technical and operational advisers in this area.

For more information about IPR protection-related activities, please contact us at: IPRteam@wcoomd.org.