The Project DURAS emerged as a funding stream after the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in South Africa in 2002. An international consortium including Namibian, South African, French and American partners accessed funding from the Project Duras, with the overall objective of creating capacity within the two participating southern African countries to claim and attach Intellectual Property Rights (IPR's), in the form of Geographical Indications (GI's), to any product originating in these countries and to investigate whether IPR's can be used as a tool to add value to local products.