OAPI
On 13 September 1962 in Libreville, Gabon, twelve Heads of State and Government adhered to the Agreement on the creation of the African and Malagasy Office of Industrial Property (OMAPI). The departure of Madagascar, the attribution of new competences in the area of copyright, and the need to interlink intellectual property with development soon created a need for a revised agreement. This led to the revision of the agreement in Bangui, Central African Republic on 2 March 1977 and to the creation of the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI, an acronym of Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle). A new revision of the agreement took place on 24 February 1999 to ensure the conformity of the agreement to the dispositions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), to which all the Member States are party. This new agreement entered into force on 28 February 2002. Today the OAPI has seventeen Member States and represents more than 100 million inhabitants.