Most coverage of intellectual property in Africa counts what is easy to count: applications filed, registrations granted, cases decided. Those numbers matter, but they say little about where value changes hands. That happens in licences, franchise agreements, brand acquisitions and technology transfers: the contracts that decide who may use a name, a formula or a patent in a market, and on what terms.
The Meridian’s Africa IP database now records those deals alongside the disputes, judgments, filings and policy changes already on our record. Each record has a stable ID, a type, its sources and a last-verified date, and each is counted once. As at 26 October 2026 the database holds 68 published records: 33 commercial transactions, 8 filings and prosecution matters, 15 disputes and enforcement actions, 5 judgments, 1 regulatory change and 6 advisory mandates. A further 70 candidate deals are held back in review because they rely on a single source or need legal review.
Hotels lead the commercial record
The largest group of published commercial deals is in hospitality. International operators are licensing their brands to African owners and developers under management and franchise agreements: Hilton in Lagos, Accra, Zanzibar and Libreville; Marriott in Kenya and Cape Town; Accor in Abuja; IHG in Dakar; and Minor Hotels in Egypt and Morocco. Each of these is, at its core, a trade mark licence with know-how attached. The owner builds and finances the hotel; the brand owner supplies the name, standards and systems, and is paid for them.
Medicines follow
The second cluster is in life sciences, where voluntary licences and sublicences let African manufacturers make patented treatments. The Medicines Patent Pool has sublicensed Roche’s influenza treatment baloxavir marboxil to Fidson Healthcare in Nigeria and Quality Chemical Industries in Uganda, and MSD has granted royalty-free voluntary licences for alimatravir to Aspen Pharmacare, Quality Chemical Industries and UCL Kenya. These deals rarely disclose money; their value lies in manufacturing rights and market access.
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The rules are moving too
Tanzania’s Written Laws (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act, 2026, gazetted on 2 October, protects collective, certification and non-traditional marks, strengthens the position of well-known marks and recognises ARIPO trade mark registrations designating Tanzania back to 1999. That last change responds to a 2025 Court of Appeal ruling that had left ARIPO registrations without enforceable effect in the country, a gap that mattered to every brand owner relying on the regional route. The record.
Why counting once matters
A filing is not a deal, and a deal reported by three outlets is still one deal. The database never treats a registration as a commercial transaction, merges duplicates rather than counting them twice, and credits a law firm or lawyer only where a source names their role. Where an existing M&A record is included because brands or other IP were a material part of the deal, its advisers receive no IP ranking credit unless a source names an IP role. The methodology is published in full, and the firm and lawyer rankings recalculate from the same records.
The thin spot is counsel. Most commercial IP deals in Africa are announced without naming their lawyers. If your firm advised on one, submit it with a public source and it will be checked before it counts.
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