Blog

As the Sub-Saharan Africa Policy Analyst at Access Now and as an affiliate at the Internet Policy Observatory (IPO) (at the Center for Global Communication Studies, University  Pennsylvania), Ephraim Percy Kenyanito works on the connection between internet policy and human rights in African Union member countries.
He is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group on Internet Governance;  the Freedom Online Coalition’s Digital Development and Openness Working Group; the Global Internet Policy Observatory’s (GIPO) Advisory Group; the Index on Censorship Youth Advisory Board; the Advisory Group for Code Red (a global initiative to accelerate reform of security organisations); and the interim steering committee for the Youth Coalition on Internet Governance (a Dynamic Coalition of the UN IGF).
He holds a Bachelor of Laws- LL.B (with Honours) and has previous training in Internet Policy and Media Law from University of Oxford and University of Pennsylvania.

Arsene Tungali has been working and collaborating for the past 5 years on projects related to Internet governance, child online protection, and women’s participation in ICT. He has been involved with CIPESA’s OpenNet Africa initiative documenting violations and digital security training in his country, the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He is a well known Congolese online activist based in Goma (Eastern DRC), followed for his regular posts on social media and blogs on politics, social life and everything related to human rights offline or online.
Arsene has attended and contributed either as a participant or a speaker at a number of UN’s annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) including as an Internet Society Ambassador (in 2015) on regional and international levels; has attended ICANN meetings as an ICANN Fellow and a number of other ICT-related events in Africa and worldwide.
He is Co-founder and Executive Director of Rudi International, which, among others, works to bring ICT-related debates close to the youth in Congo and is currently serving as Co-Coordinator of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC).

Anriette Esterhuysen is the executive director of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an international network of organizations working with Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to support social justice and development. Anriette has served on various global committees and working groups including the African Technical Advisory Committee of the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa’s African Information Society Initiative and the United Nations ICT Task Force, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Task Working Group on Financing Mechanisms, and the Commission for Science and Technology for Development Working Group on Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Improvements.
Anriette was one of five finalists (only female and only civil society finalist) for IT Personality of the Year in South Africa in 2012, an award which recognises a person who has made an outstanding impact on the South African ICT industry.
Currently Anriette is a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance and the Council of the NETmundial Initiative. Esterhuysen has published extensively on ICTs for development and social justice.

As the Head of Legal, Sub-Saharan Africa at Google, Ife oversees the entire spectrum of Google’s legal work in Sub Saharan Africa. Her work includes advising the regional business, product and engineering teams on relevant legal issues, negotiating and drafting a variety of commercial agreements, dispute resolution and representing Google before legal and regulatory stakeholders.
Prior to Google she was General Counsel at Innovations for Poverty Action, a US think tank where she was in charge of the organization’s legal and compliance issues in the US, Asia, Latin America and Africa.  Ife has an extensive background in various aspects of law having worked at the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group), UNHCR, Oxfam America, and the law firm of Mohamed and Muigai in Nairobi, Kenya. Ife has a passion for teaching and has taught at Tufts University, Boston University School of Public Health and Rutgers University in the US.

Ebele Okobi is the Head of Public Policy, Africa at Facebook, where she leads on engaging with government, civil society and other policy influencers and shaping Facebook’s policy agenda across sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to Facebook, Ebele was the founding Global Head and Senior Legal Director for Human Rights at Yahoo, where she led Yahoo’s efforts to address the legal and policy issues related to privacy, free expression and access.
Ebele was a founding member of the Global Network Initiative Board from 2008 to 2014, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Alliance for An Affordable Internet’s Advisory Board. She earned a BA in Psychology from the University of Southern California, a JD from Columbia Law School and an MBA Certificat des Études from HEC-Paris. She is married and has four children.