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11Apr

Sixth Annual Internet Governance Forum Comes to East Africa

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By Lillian Nalwoga
The Sixth Annual IGF Meeting will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 27-30 September 2011 at the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON). With the main theme of ‘Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation’, it is hoped that the IGF will strengthen the Internet governance debate in East Africa.
Prior to the global forum, East African countries will once again – this time in the Rwandan capital Kigali – convene to deliberate internet governance issues pertinent to the region.
The East African-Internet Governance Forum (EA-IGF) was first convened in 2008 with participation from four East African countries (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda). The forum aims at creating a Community of Practice that will build a sustaining foundation for meaningful participation of East African stakeholders in Internet public policy debates at the national, regional and international level.
The EA-IGF model allows for the informed participation, contribution and engagement of community members through the sharing of experiences and skills, solving common problems and challenges, the creation of new knowledge and increasing local capacity and talent in Internet Governance issues. The EAIGF follows a bottom-up multi-stakeholder approach, which begins at the national level with mailing list discussions in the five East African countries moderated by national animators, followed by national face-to-face IGFs. The national IGFs then form the building block for the regional East African IGF.
CIPESA in collaboration with the Ugandan Ministry of ICT, Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), I-Network Uganda and the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) hosted the 3rd East African Internet Governance Forum (EA-IGF) in 2010. The forum focused on “Strengthening East Africa’s Critical Internet Resources”.
The 2010 EA-IGF called for multi-stakeholder participation by redefining the term ‘internet governance’ and also recommended the formation of a working group to develop strategies that will strengthen ccTLDs in the region in light of competition for gTLDs.
More about the EAIGF:  http://eaigf.or.ke/eaigf/eaigf.html

04Apr

ICTs For Democracy: Connecting The Dots

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CIPESA is spearheading a multi-year programme that catalyses the use of ICTs in enabling and monitoring democracy. The programme, to be undertaken with various partners, is still under construction but will be multi-faceted. Initial work has started, such as a baseline study to establish the current state of play and the opportunities for intervention. Raising citizen participation in community/ public affairs via ICTs is central to this initiative. For more information about the initiative, please write to [email protected]

04Apr

Measuring e-readiness in Africa

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E-ready for what? E-readiness in developing countries: Current status and prospects toward the Millennium Development Goals 
This study considers the use and usefulness of e-readiness assessments, based on an in-depth evaluation of the e-readiness assessment initiative of the World Bank Information for Development Program (infoDev). Top-down, international initiatives waste money and effort on poorly conceived and under-supported e-readiness assessment programs and can be better targeted toward concrete development goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals. The focus needs to move from “how much bandwidth?” to “how much bandwidth is needed for remote diagnosis to reduce child mortality?” Even before this report made it to final publication, the infoDev e-readiness initiative was retired and many of the statements made in this report are now taken as a given.
Download the full report here.

04Apr

Swaziland Consults On ICT Policy

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Participants of the consultation meeting on the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy have called for government to change the name of the ministry of information, communication and technology (ICT) because it was confusing.
One of the participants Sipho Dlamini said ICT fell under Science and Technology and the ministry needed to be renamed. However, he did not come up with a suggestion.
http://www.observer.org.sz/index.php?news=24024

04Apr

OECD Estimates Economic Impact of Shutting Down Internet And Mobile Phone Services in Egypt

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The current shutdown of internet and communications services in Egypt will have a pronounced economic impact. It is estimated to have incurred direct costs of at minimum USD 90 million in lost revenues due to blocked telecommunications and internet services. However, this amount does not include the secondary economic impacts which resulted from a loss of business in other sectors affected by the shutdown of communication services, such as e-commerce, tourism and call centres. Read more:

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