FIM

Passed away on Saturday 1 July 2017, Abiadé Adewusi, President of SARIAC (Togo), played a key role in found­ing the FIM African group in 1997

By Roméo Dika, FIM Vice-President

During the WIPO sem­i­nar organ­ised in Lomé in 1997, help­ing train our new and inex­pe­ri­enced organ­i­sa­tions in many fields which were of inter­est to cor­po­ra­tion, Jean Vincent, then FIM General Secretary, pro­posed that African asso­cia­tive and union organ­i­sa­tions belong to FIM.

While the oth­er Africans turned away from this pro­pos­al, Abiadé Adewusi brought togeth­er Mamadou Barry and Ryad Challoub from Guinea, Ismael Lo from Senegal, Valen Guédé from the Ivory Coast and myself for Cameroon in a restaurant.

After six hours of con­vers­ing around a “poulet bicy­clette” or a dish based on free-​range chick­en, Togo, Guinea and Cameroon decid­ed to join FIM. Abiadé Adéwusi was nat­u­ral­ly tasked with coor­di­nat­ing his African Committee and pro­posed hold­ing the first meet­ing in Guinea in December 1997, date when the African group was offi­cialised with­in FIM.

What a long way we’ve come down the road since then! In 1998, for the first time, African organ­i­sa­tions took part in the FIM Congress which was held in Bern. The three of us attend­ed — Abiadé, Ryad and myself. While Abiadé expressed him­self on behalf of Africa, he asked Ryad to speak for the group. The lat­ter is a bril­liant ora­tor and Congress applaud­ed Africa for five, yes five long min­utes after his speech. Subsequently, President John Morton urged us to present an African can­di­date to be elect­ed on the Executive Committee. Ryad cried out: “Abiadé, you must be our rep­re­sen­ta­tive!”. Abiadé turned round and said: “Ryad, you’re the direc­tor of the Guinean bureau on copy­right, I’ve too many prob­lems in Togo with the direc­tor of the copy­right bureau, Roméo is our young broth­er, he’ll rep­re­sent us.”

Abiadé, 1997 – 2017, twen­ty years of close bonds. Maître Barry, Abiadé and myself took the habit of con­sult­ing, to share our expe­ri­ences and con­tribute to the run­ning and evo­lu­tion of the FIM African Committee. We were sub­se­quent­ly joined by Dick Matovu (Uganda), Banana Shekupe (Namibia), Alhadji Buari (Ghana), Oupa Lebogo (South Africa) and all the others.

Throughout our com­mon path, I can­not for­get the gen­eros­i­ty, avail­abil­i­ty, lis­ten­ing and shar­ing skills, his search for con­sen­sus but above all the smile and joy of liv­ing expressed by my old­er broth­er. We’ll nev­er for­get you my brother.