Integrating Intellectual Property Education into Ghana’s Basic School Curriculum: A Pedagogy for Cultural Preservation, Societal Innovation, and Fostering Future Creative Economy Leaders

Abstract

Integrating intellectual property (IP) education into post-colonial curricula is a culturally charged intervention, especially where Western juridical norms intersect with communal knowledge traditions. This qualitative study examines Ghana’s prospective IP literacy integration into its pre-tertiary curriculum, utilising semi-structured interviews with 25 purposively selected stakeholders, including curriculum architects, creative arts educators, IP practitioners, and indigenous cultural custodians. Framed by Bourdieu’s theory of practice, Problem-Based Learning, and UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) principles, thematic analysis reveals that IP frameworks are largely perceived as culturally exogenous. This generates pedagogical tensions, as educators exhibit low self-efficacy not from cognitive deficits, but from the perceived irrelevance of codified ownership logics to local creative praxis, with the current syllabus offering no space for these epistemological frictions. Paradoxically, stakeholders view IP as a potential shield for heritage, advocating for a phased, contextualised pedagogy anchored in indigenous narratives. The paper contends that sustainable IP education demands more than technical training; it requires a decolonial reorientation that repositions local artisans as primary agents of knowledge validation. Ultimately, this study provides policymakers with a critical roadmap, arguing that a carefully designed pilot phase is essential to empirically test these theorised tensions, safeguard Ghana’s cultural capital, and nurture its creative economy within the basic school curriculum.