Public Policy 

Internet Governance

Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

Report of workshop: “Internet Governance - What strategies for Developing Countries, What Strategy for Africa?”

Rio de Janeiro, November 15, 2007

The panel discussion gathered the following eight panelists from various organizations:

1. Pierre Dandjinou, UNDP
2. Michuki Mwange, AfTLD
3. Boubakar Barry, AfREN, AAU
4. Adiel Akplogan, AfriNIC
5. William Stucke, AfrISPA Chairman
6. Nii Quaynor, AfNOG
7. Abdoulaye Diakite, Collège International de l'Afnic
8. Dawit Bekele, Internet Society
9. Pierre Ouedraogo, OIF
10. Sebastian Bellagamba, Internet Society
11. Mactar Seck, UNECA
12. Ken Lohento, CIPACO

The first session was a stock taking session. The panel was constituted of Nii Quaynor, Mactar Seck, Michuki Mwange, Pierre Dandjinou and the two co-chairs, Ken Lohento and Sebastian Bellagamba. The panelists indicated the importance of capacity building without which Internet cannot grow. Access has also been considered as the priority for Africa. The panelists also highlighted the difficulties in engaging Africans in Internet governance discussions even though there was considerable interest in the WSIS process that preceded the IGF. For Pierre Dandjinou the ball is in the technical communities ground since the politicians gave a recommendation through Tarek Kamel, Egypt’s minister of communication.

When the floor was opened for the participants, the following points were raised:

1. The Af* are crucial for the capacity building in Africa and to go to the next level.
2. Security, IP and freedom of expression are important issues in the Internet governance discussions for Africa. It is an area where Africans would benefit from the global discussions since the problem is global.
3. The planning of IGF workshops in Rio was not adequate. The best practices workshops (Tunisia, Kenya, Senegal) were after 6 PM when people have gone. They were only little, almost exclusively African attendance. This is a pity since the three countries had a lot of things to show. The participant then asked “Have Africans come to talk to themselves?” and added “If so, they could have done it in Africa.”
4. RASCOM was supposed to solve the problem of connectivity in Africa by launching a satellite for Africa. But, it has been postponed and there is no information on the reasons of the delay? RASCOM is an example of the failure of the top-down approach.
5. Algeria has a project to promote a PC per household with broadband access. 200,000 PCs have been sold in the last two years, which is found insufficient. The government has lowered the VAT from 17 to 7 % and has started providing bank loan in order to reach the “one PC per household” vision.
6. The African Internet community is used to looking to the north for solutions. There is however some south-south cooperation, especially between AfNOG and AfriNIC and the Latin American community, but there should be more of that.
7. We cannot be sustainable with projects. There should be cooperation at all levels: Politicians and practitioners. Even before looking to the north or even to the east, we should look what is happening locally.
8. There are some successes in Africa but they are not shared. It is important that we know our strength and weaknesses by sharing our experiences.

The second session was focusing on the way forward. The panel was composed of William Stucke, Adiel Akplogan, Abdoulaye Diakité, Dawit Bekele and Pierre Ouédraogo. The panelists raised a number of crucial issues among which the following are the major ones.

There is not adequate competition in the telecommunication and Internet sector in Africa. The main cause is the reluctance of the government “to let go”: to trust other stakeholders. There is a major problem in the regulation of this sector. In the submarine cable area, SAT3’s monopoly has expired and the governments are not ready for the next step. However, there are a few plans to connect Nigeria and Kenya.

Access in Africa is a problem but not for long since there is an interest to do business in Africa as long as the right environment is created. The high growth of the mobile sector is testimony for that. It is just that we need to create the right environment. We should now think of the way we should be connected and interconnected. For instance, there are six African countries that are using the same platform. The technical community should also give its advice to the government. It should also exchange its best practices. It would be a mistake to limit critical resources to IP addresses: there are IP addresses available at AfriNIC right now, but people do not know that they have to come to AfriNIC to get them.

The scarcity of IPv4 is an important issue in the whole Internet Governance process in Developing Countries. But as long as long as they will only focus on the problem, they will not succeed. They must move quickly to the solution for IPv4 depletion and help policy makers understand the problem and the solutions. Capacity building supported by co-development approach is crucial in this way. ICT Trainers Training programs (FFTI) and Free registry management software (CodevNIC) initiative of the International College of AFNIC are good examples in this regards.

Even though the great majority of Africans never had the opportunity to use the Internet, security is a priority issue since without security the Africans who get the chance to use the Internet will not be able to use it to change their lives. In fact there is an underground economy that feeds the cybercriminals which makes securing the Internet a major challenge. Security of the Internet is a global problem and all the regions, developed or developing, should cooperate to insure it.

Multistakeholder regional cooperation is crucial for cybersecurity. In this regards, the establishment of AfriPKI in Tunisia and the cybersecurity meeting organized in Abidjan, with the assistance of the Francophonie, are good examples. The development of CERTs is another major issue for cybersecurity.

The great difficulty for developing countries is that everything is a priority. Besides, when it comes to connectivity, Africans pay much higher than the rest of the world. For example, a higher institution in Africa pays 5,000 USD for the same connection that a US higher institution gets for just 150 USD. All issues related to Internet are interlinked and it is not sufficient that the various stakeholders, policy makers and technical community in particular, meet separately. They should all work together: agree on a vision and work for its realization.

During the questions and answers session, the participants gave the following comments:

1. The future of the growth of Internet in Africa is in the involvement of consumers and businesses.
2. We should bring the IGF issue to the regulators who are concerned about universal access
3. We have not done enough on the use of local languages for the 95% of the population that doesn’t speak French or English. ACALAN , the African Academy of Languages, will have a major meeting in this direction.
4. Our regulators are very young and there is a big need for capacity building.