Posts Tagged ‘Tanzania’
Mysteries of Axum, the Ark of the Covenant, and Tanzanian President Mkapa’s view of intellectual property rights - a current story for Ethiopia
We are about to walk you through a wild, wild ride. We are going to take you from Steven Spielberg’s movie, “Raiders of the lost Ark,” starring Harrison Ford, to a quick exploration of the Ark of the Covenant, to the city of Axum, Ethiopia, where some say the Ark is now located, and then on to Rome. We will end up finally in Dar es Salaam, where we believe Tanzania’s President Mkapa, perhaps unwittingly, or perhaps very shrewdly, has hit upon what could turn out to be a major fire-storm on the matter of African intellectual property rights. Hold on tightly, this is going to be a fun-filled and fast ride through a complex labyrinth to a modern subject with profound implications. This story, originally published on this web site on June 24, 2001, has been in the news recently. The Ethiopian prime minister on June 10, 2002, formally asked Italy to return the Axum obelisk. Read the rest of this entry »