| Experts back formation of Africa Internet forum | Send to a friend |
| Friday, 07 October 2011 20:41 |
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Makane Faye, Officer-in-charge of the E-applications Section of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and moderator of the session that established the Africa IGF, said the forum will coordinate action on internet governance issues, strengthen multi-stakeholder dialogue on Africa’s internet governance through regional and national forums and ensure that all countries are part of the regional processes. The IGF is a United Nations led-activity initiated in 2006 as a global platform for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on prevailing and emerging issues on Internet governance in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability, and development of the Internet. The forum is an outcome of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). During its deliberations last week, the Africa Union, through its Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) said it plans to put in place policies to enable Africa to radically improve the Information Technology Communication (ICT) trade, including expansion of mobile phone and internet access. The plan is to enable every African capital to connect with each other through high-speed internet. The AU hopes an internet boom would generate enough data volumes from within the continent. The AU has engaged a European consultant to carry out feasibility studies on the medium-term to long-term ICT policies that would enable Africa to boost the internet infrastructure. The feasibility studies are being carried out at a cost of 8 million Euros on the implementation of the ICT Master plan (2013). The conference organized by ECA and the African Union Commission (AUC) was held under the theme “Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation.” The delegates agreed that after the formation of national and regional IGFs, there was need for the formation of Africa IGF to act as a platform for an inclusive multilateral, multi-stakeholder and multilingual discussion on issues pertinent to the internet in Africa. Currently, there are four regional IGFs, namely West Africa Internet Governance Forum (WAIGF), East Africa Internet Governance Forum (EAIGF), Southern Africa Internet Governance Forum (SAIGF) and Forum de Gouvernance de l’Internet en Afrique Centrale (FGI-CA) for Central African countries. North African countries have agreed to establish their sub-regional IGF as soon as possible. Alice Munyua, Chair of Kenya’s Internet Governance Steering Committee, was appointed Chairperson of the Africa IGF, while ECA will host the secretariat. Delegates accepted the offer made by the Egyptian Government to host the next Africa IGF meeting in Cairo in 2012. Adiel Akplogan, the Chief Executive Officer of the African Network Information Center (AfriNic), said the high cost of inter- connectivity was due to the skewed flow of data from Africa and into Africa. ‘’This is a pure economical war. The Kenyan companies prefer to pay the cheaper cost of inter-connectivity to a British company compared to a South African company, which would probably charge higher. “We cannot dictate to these companies. We are prone to kill business if we push a decision on where to pay these fees,’’ Akplogan said last week. He said a decision on the high cost of inter-connectivity fees paid by African firms should be taken at a worldwide level and not at a local or continental level. ‘’By allowing phone and internet network companies to exchange traffic would allow the cost of access to internet and the cost of inter-connection to drop,’’ Akplogan said. (Xinhua) Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
